


First Love, Late Spring

by hollycomb



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Anxiety, First Dates, First Meetings, Intimacy, Kindred Spirits, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Marathon Sex, Pillow Talk, Post-Coital Cuddling, Rimming, Self-Esteem Issues, Size Kink, Sleeping Together, Soulmates, Trust Kink, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2018-11-13 01:47:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11174475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: "Hux felt like he had nothing left to lose and ended up back at the apartment Ren shared with his cousin and her husband, indulging in what he assumed would be a reckless one night stand. It was reckless indeed, but Hux was still there three days and approximately nineteen fucks later."Ren's POV on bringing a lonely ginger criminal home and never wanting to let him go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a long prequel to [IKEA fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8465791)!! Can certainly be read as a standalone as well. 
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> ~~

Hammerheads was crowded that night. Shouldering his way toward the bar, Ren counted three regulars he’d fucked in not distant enough memory. He avoided eye contact and felt a familiar unearned gloominess overtaking him, such that he regretted coming at all. Then he saw the redhead at the bar.  
   
His narrow shoulders were curved inward as he huddled around his drink, speaking to no one and radiating a kind of miserable isolation that seemed intentional. Hammerheads was an odd choice for solitary drinking, especially for a twink with eye-catching hair and an air of snobbish mystery that drew Ren to him like a beacon. There was a squirrelly guy next to the redhead, sitting as close as he could without being invited to interact. Ren stepped up to the bar and warned the encroaching guy away with a lingering look. He got the hell out of there in a hurry.  
   
“Was that guy bothering you?” Ren asked once he’d taken the now vacant seat, leaning close so the redhead could hear him over the Phil Collins that was blasting. Hammerheads was owned by an old man with unapologetic taste. This unpretentious weirdness was one reason Ren kept coming back here despite all the guys he’d fucked who were always hanging around, looking at him with unasked questions in their eyes.  
   
In the redhead’s eyes there was disdain, then fear when he’d taken in Ren’s size.  
   
“What guy?” he asked. Upon closer examination, his eyes were heavy with something that had nothing to do with Ren, some profound pain that made Ren a little hard in his pants when the redhead fixed him with a look that was equal parts defiant and defeated.  
   
“Forget it, he’s gone. I’m Ren.” It rarely felt wrong to introduce himself with the name he’d chosen rather than the one that had been chosen for him, but something about this guy’s unblinking scrutiny made him feel caught, like he was confessing that he was someone else, too, at the same time. “Never seen you here before.”  
   
“Do people really say that?”  
   
“I just did.”  
   
“I suppose people like you can say whatever they want.”  
   
“People like me?” Ren glanced away and caught the bartender’s eyes. It was Snap tonight, thankfully one of the few tenured employees of Hammerheads that Ren hadn’t fucked. He was quick to bring Ren’s usual tequila. When Ren glanced back to the redhead he was disappointed to see that his posture had returned to a hunch, his eyes averted as if he was ready to forget Ren was there. Ren flicked his shoulder and grinned at the feral glare he got in return. “What do you mean, people like me?”  
   
“Big guys with lots of tattoos.”  
   
“That’s all you need to know about me, huh?” Ren put his elbow on the bartop between them, making a show of the size of his bicep. No sense in being subtle at Hammerheads or anywhere really. It wasn’t his style. “What’s your name?”  
   
“I can’t tell you that.”  
   
“How come?”  
   
“Because I’m a criminal and my name is infamous.”  
   
Ren smiled. The redhead flushed and drank, pretending to be unaffected. His blush got Ren a bit harder, and he had to throw back the tequila to reel himself in.  
   
“I like dangerous men,” Ren said.  
   
“I’ll bet.”  
   
“What’d you do?”  
   
“Securities fraud. That dangerous enough for you?”  
   
Ren shifted in his seat. A guilt-riddled, blush-prone twink who was running from his life of white collar crime: if Ren had a type, this was him, though this was also the first of his kind Ren had encountered. It was an epiphany, this expanding lust accompanied by something far more innocent, like pure delight.  
   
“Tell me your name,” Ren said, looming into the guy’s space and doing his gentle yet scary stare. As a kid he’d pretended that he could use it to control the minds of those who were foolish enough to make eye contact with him. Sometimes he still pretended, and it actually worked pretty well, exuding this fake confidence that he could take what he wanted.  
   
“Hux.”  
   
“That’s a name?”  
   
“You don’t recognize it?”  
   
Hux raised his eyebrows and drank from his glass. He was having whiskey. Ren was already thinking about kissing the lingering heat of it from Hux’s lips. They looked soft, and the bottom one was a little fat, maybe because Hux had been chewing it before he got buzzed enough to tamper down his anxiety.  
   
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of you, Hux. Guess I’m not up on my securities fraud news.”  
   
This seemed to offend Hux. He turned away slightly and drank from his glass again, draining it this time.  
   
“I’ll buy you another one,” Ren said, signalling to Snap without looking away from Hux. “And you can tell me the story of your life of crime while you drink it.”  
   
“No thanks.”  
   
“Why not? Are you waiting for someone else?”  
   
Hux scoffed and gave Ren a look as if to suggest it was ridiculous, the idea that he had come here to meet someone. But that was what was Hammerheads was for, and Hux seemed too smart to wander into a place like this without some idea of what he wanted.  
   
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Hux mumbled. He scowled at the glass of whiskey that Snap set down in front of him, then drank from it. “I suppose that’s why I’m here. To wallow.”  
   
“You want some company? I’m good at wallowing.”  
   
Hux glanced over at Ren and surveyed him, drunk enough to let his gaze drop to Ren’s crotch when he spread his legs in Hux’s direction.  
   
“Right,” Hux said. “You look like a world champion wallower.”  
   
“Was that sarcasm? You don’t know me. In high school I took the title every year. All-State wallowing champion. Got me a scholarship to art school, even.”  
   
Hux smiled. He was staring down at his drink. If Ren could get him to look up again before that smile faded, they would fuck. He was sure of it.  
   
“You’re an artist?” Hux said, which was even better: he was curious, asking questions. Ren was glowing with victory already, his mouth watering at the thought of Hux’s sex noises, how soft and ashamed they’d be at first.  
   
“That’s right,” Ren said. He nudged Hux with his elbow and got the look he’d been hoping for: a warning that burned around something molten hot, vulnerable to taking whatever shape Ren wanted it to. “Guess what kind of art I do.”  
   
“Performance.”  
   
“Sometimes.”  
   
“Ha. So you’re an actor?”  
   
Ren thought of his grandfather and felt himself smiling ruefully the way he always did. He shook his head.  
   
“I swore that I would never act,” he said. “On stage or screen.”    
   
Hux laughed, and the flicker of melancholy that always sparked within Ren at the memory of Anakin dropped away. He got the feeling Hux hadn’t laughed at anything in a while.  
   
“You swore?” Hux said. He drank from his glass, still grinning in his eyes. “Okay-- What?”  
   
“I made a solemn vow to my mother.”  
   
“About acting?”  
   
“That’s right.”  
   
“Is this a story you’re willing to tell?”  
   
“Maybe. Not here, though.”  
   
“Ah, of course.” Hux considered his drink and then put it down without sipping. He leaned close to Ren and braced his hand on Ren’s shoulder for balance. “Do you know,” he said, muttering this close to Ren’s ear and tightening his grip, “How long it’s been since I had some dick?”  
   
Ren had to swallow down a nervous laugh that would have ruined the moment. It was the kind of rookie mistake that usually didn’t threaten to spoil his game, but he was affected by this guy in a way that was giving him flashbacks to his clumsy horndog adolescence: Hux’s cold hand on his shoulder, the whiskey breath, the way his green eyes swam with something that said _I dare you_ while they also begged to be taken in hand, seen to, hoarded into a hidden place where Hux could tumble completely open.  
   
“Got good news, then,” Ren said, keeping his face close to Hux’s.  
   
“Hmm?”  
   
Ren put his hand on Hux’s thigh, just high enough. He leaned in and spoke against the rim of Hux’s ear.  
   
“I’ve got a dick,” Ren said, husky and hot. “A big one.”  
   
Hux laughed, giddy with how far he’d gone and how much he didn’t care. Ren was glad to be mostly sober. He’d get Hux there, too, before they fucked. Hux would still want it. This was bigger than a random hookup with a twink who’d appeared at Hammerheads like a vision. Ren was feeling things, letting Hux hold his gaze for too long without speaking.  
   
“Well then,” Hux said. He blinked rapidly in a way that might be considered eyelash batting. “Shall we go to my place or yours?”  
   
_Shall we_ , Ren thought, clutching that in the fist of his heart. For a moment he worried that maybe this was going to be too good, a whole momentum-changing thing, but he was getting ahead of himself.  
   
“I have roommates,” Ren said, because Hux looked like he might have a penthouse.  
   
“I live in a motel,” Hux said. All signs of mirth left his eyes. “I’m here because-- Because I couldn’t stand the smell or the sounds or the sight of that room for another moment.”  
   
Ren almost said ‘oh’ aloud, but stopped himself. So Hux was the real deal, a full blown tragic cautionary tale with a face too pretty for prison and eyes that could go from begging to knifing in a blink.  
   
“Come with me,” Ren said, getting hard again. He stood and offered Hux his hand. When Hux took it without standing, Ren leaned down to seal the deal, bringing his lips to Hux’s ear again. “Gonna take care of you,” he said, keeping his voice to a low rumble. His signature rumble, some might say, but for once he really meant what he was saying with it. “Sweet thing.”  
   
“No endearments,” Hux said, so seriously that he seemed entirely sober. He let go of Ren’s hand and stood, digging for his wallet.  
   
“No need,” Ren said. He motioned to Snap and pointed to Hux, then himself. “It’s taken care of,” he said when he looked back to Hux.  
   
“You have a tab here,” Hux said, stuffing his wallet back in his pocket. “Of course. Is there a sad sack like me in here every day of the week, waiting for you to--”  
   
“There’s never been anyone like you in here.”  
   
Ren said this with finality and turned, knowing Hux would follow him to the door.  
   
It was early evening near the end of spring, just cool enough to make goosebumps rise on Ren’s bare arms as they walked to his truck in the fading daylight, Hux trailing a few steps behind him in some kind of prideful imitation of restraint. Ren turned back once he’d reached the passenger door. He opened it for Hux and took full stock of what Hux was wearing: a slim, untucked button-down shirt that looked finely made but also like it could use a washing. His slacks were custom tailored to hug his little ass perfectly, shoes brown leather and unshined but still fussy.  
   
“What?” Hux said when he saw Ren staring.  
   
“Nice shoes.”  
   
“Fuck you. You’re wearing a tank top.”  
   
Ren grinned and gestured for Hux to get into the truck. Hux scowled but obeyed. Ren liked the combination and had to instruct himself not to try to kiss Hux through the open passenger side window as he closed the door. He wanted Hux to be hungry for it all the way to his place, squirming.  
   
“Are you all right to drive?” Hux asked after he’d already buckled himself in, which Ren found symbolic, fittingly tragic.  
   
“I’m fine. Only had that one shot, and I’m a big guy.”  
   
“Nn, so you said.”  
   
Hux was sobering fast, which meant he was a habitual drinker, which didn’t surprise Ren. He drove all the way to Finn and Rey’s apartment in silence. Finn and Rey weren’t technically his roommates so much as the sympathetic family members who let him live in their spare room after Ren’s mother and father had respectively thrown him out of their separate residences following his third attempt at grad school.  
   
The apartment was empty when they walked in, and the last of the sunset had faded outside. They walked in the dark toward Ren’s room, which was in its usual chaotic state, clothes and books and half-finished projects scattered about, art supplies and musical instruments strewn between the major deposits. Ren lit candles on his bedside table and on the dresser, to make the mess look romantic.  
   
“How old are you?” Hux asked when Ren turned from the sixth lit candle, shaking out a match.  
   
“Thirty,” Ren said, though he would be twenty-nine for another couple of months. He aged himself up because Hux seemed to be suggesting he had a sudden suspicion that Ren was a teenager.  
   
“Right.” Hux scratched at his elbow and looked around at the mess. “That’s what I thought, but. Anyway, ah. I suppose I can’t judge.”  
   
“I’ll clear off the bed,” Ren said, feeling stupid and teenaged. He swept everything but the twisted sheets onto the floor in one armload, hoping this gesture would look Herculean or at least chivalrous. He didn’t usually bring guys back here. Fucking in the truck bed was efficient and sent the right message.  
   
Hux lingered near the window on the far wall, his silhouette outlined in streetlight. Ren labored to recapture his certainty as he walked toward Hux, knowing how commanding his gentle-scary look could be by the glow of six candles. Hux had the right combination of frightened interest on his face when Ren loomed into his space, letting the hem of his tank brush the front of Hux’s shirt.  
   
“So how long has it been?” Ren asked.  
   
“What?”  
   
“Since you got fucked. You want me to top you, right?”  
   
“ _Top_ me.”  
   
It wasn’t an invitation: Hux rolled his eyes, mocking the terminology. He was warm and so close, so _real_ in some way that shouldn’t have felt unexpected. Ren suddenly felt like it was strange that he’d never brought someone back here.  
   
“Oh, did you want to top?” Ren was sarcastic, though he would be down for it if that was what Hux was after, just disappointed in himself for diagnosing the situation so inaccurately.  
   
“I-- No, I. I’m out of practice, obviously.”  
   
“Yeah? Let’s see.”  
   
Ren took hold of Hux’s jaw and tipped his face up. Hux’s mouth fell open, his breath already coming faster as Ren leaned in for a kiss. He kissed Hux slow, like it was a test, prodding him open wider with measured swipes of his tongue and tracking his micro reactions. Hux tasted of whisky and dill. Ren normally detested the hint of anything food-like on another person’s breath and avoided kissing if he could detect it, but on Hux it was oddly fascinating and left Ren wanting to interview him about his day. Maybe he’d gone to Wheelhouse for lunch and ordered the open-faced bagel sandwich that Ren always got there. Hux would have looked more at home in Wheelhouse than at Hammerheads. Ren would have tried to chat him up there, too.  
   
Ren pulled back and stared into Hux’s eyes. He was already hunger dazed, red-faced and watching Ren’s mouth. Ren nudged his thigh forward and swallowed an approving moan when he felt Hux’s erection tenting those well-tailored pants.  
   
“Take off your clothes,” Ren said, stepping back.  
   
Ren pulled his tank off when Hux hesitated, as a gesture of goodwill and also to show off. Hux stared and held the button he’d been working on between unmoving fingers, lips parted.  
   
Unable to resist, Ren thumbed his jeans open and let Hux watch him peel the zipper down. When Ren was younger he’d been ugly, reviled by both sexes because he was always getting caught staring. He still thought he was ugly in two out of three reflective surfaces, the car windows and shop fronts that he was always peering hopefully into, looking for himself, but he liked his body, and men like Hux, men who came home with him: they liked it, too.  
   
“Fuck,” Hux said when Ren had taken off everything but his underwear, which might as well have been gone for how poorly they concealed his straining cock. Hux was still unbuttoning his shirt, slowly. “You really could be an actor,” Hux said when his gaze flicked back up to Ren’s face.  
   
“Right.” Ren didn’t appreciate the joke, or the assumption that he was susceptible to fake flattery. Anakin had been classically handsome, a teen heartthrob and then a leading man. “I have done some stunt work,” he said, flexing.  
   
“Well, I haven’t,” Hux mumbled, as if the soft skin that he revealed as he shrugged off his shirt would be a disappointment, or the small pink nipples pillowed on his chest like little candies, the flush that crept downward from his neck. His shoulders, his collarbones-- Ren took two steps toward him without thinking, hands twitching at his sides.  
   
Hux looked nervous. He unbuttoned his pants too slowly. Ren walked forward to help him.  
   
“Jesus,” Ren said. He wanted to bite Hux’s shoulder, the slope of his neck. “I’m gonna fuck you so hard,” he said, as mildly as he could, so Hux would know that he could object if that wasn’t what he wanted.  
   
“Yes,” Hux said. It sounded involuntary, like the little jerks of his hips and the way his eyes fluttered shut when Ren reached into his opened pants and palmed his cock, which was already leaking against the front of his soft gray briefs. Hux’s mouth was wet when Ren kissed him, soaked and ravenous. He licked against Ren’s tongue like he was savoring the taste of him, too.  
   
“So hard,” Ren said again, nothing mild about it this time.  
   
“Please,” Hux said, nodding, eyes closed. He’d taken hold of Ren’s arms and was using them to brace himself as he tried to fuck Ren’s hand, falling apart fast. He was going to feel so good, like a riptide or a reawakening. Ren was vibrating in his bones, ready to be taken out to sea, almost scared of how lucky he felt.  
   
“Baby,” Ren said, in awe, when Hux rolled his hips just right and his head fell back, nipples peaking into dainty points that begged to be licked, sucked, teased with teeth.  
   
Hux’s eyes snapped open. He lifted his head, wrinkled his nose.  
   
“I said not to, _ah_. Don’t, don’t call me--”  
   
“What kind of name is Hux? What do you like to be called?”  
   
“I-- Ah, I don’t, nothing, I don’t know--”  
   
“You can call me whatever you want,” Ren said. He let go of Hux’s cock and licked his cheek, took hold of the waistband of both his pants and underwear. “Bet you’ll be screaming my name by the time I come inside you.”  
   
“Oh, god,” Hux said. He whimpered as Ren knelt down to divest him of the rest of his clothing, peeling the pants off one ankle at a time. When Hux was nude, Ren was on his knees before him, still tenting his own underwear, his face close to Hux’s sticky cockhead. Ren decided not to comment on the color of the hair between Hux’s legs, though he adored it already. It felt like a present. All of Hux did, and it was so clear that it had been far too long since someone had unwrapped him. His shoulders were tense, arms at his sides like he was standing at attention for a military inspection. Maybe he’d gone to military school. Ren licked his lips at the thought, cock pulsing inside his briefs.  
   
“You want to wear a condom while I suck you?” Ren asked, letting his hot breath ghost over Hux’s cock, where more precome was beading out from his slit.    
   
“I--” Hux flinched. “I’m not-- I don’t know, do you, do you get tested, or--”  
   
“Yes. Regularly, and I’m always clear.” It was true; he fucked around a lot, but was careful. “I don’t suck dick bare unless it’s with someone like you.”  
   
“Someone, like-- What--”  
   
“And like I said, nobody like you has ever walked into that bar before.”  
   
“Just suck my fucking dick,” Hux said, stumbling forward. He put his hands on Ren’s head, anchoring shaking fingers in his hair. There was something oddly tender about his grip. “I haven’t had sex since the last time I got a test with all negatives, so, ah-- Yeah, just. Do it.”  
   
_I feel like I know you_ , was what Ren had been trying to say, in the context of cock-sucking, and _You can trust me, too_.  
   
He licked the precome from Hux’s dick, precise and slow with just the tip of his tongue, and swallowed it down like it was an extension of the choked-off, disbelieving noise Hux made: a fucking delicacy. Exquisite.  
   
“Fuck,” Hux said, exhaling the word slowly and watching from beneath heavy eyelids as Ren took another taste, then another. Hux’s cock was pretty and blushy like the rest of him, sweet on Ren’s tongue when Ren finally took him in deep. Hux shuddered and whined, arching into the feeling. He tugged softly on Ren’s hair while he fucked his mouth in polite little twitches, his thighs shaking in Ren’s hands while he tried to hold back.  
   
Then he wasn’t holding back anymore: he came hard down Ren’s throat, shouting and tugging not so softly on his hair.  
   
Ren lapped at him in the aftermath, getting him clean and then torturing him a bit, listening as Hux’s sounds morphed from drowsy pleasure into overstimulated gasps, his thighs trying to twist free from Ren’s grip. Ren relented and stood, pulling Hux against him.  
   
“Your mouth,” Hux said, and he kissed it, moaning for the taste of himself.  
   
Ren backed him toward the bed and deposited him there before standing back to finally reveal his cock. Hux stared, mouth bright pink and open. He looked up into Ren’s face and opened his legs, bending both at the knee and flattening his feet onto the mattress, uncertain hands twitching over his belly.  
   
“I’ll get a condom for this part,” Ren said. The most ineloquent possible words that could have left his mouth in that moment; he almost winced.  
   
“Why?” Hux asked.  
   
“Well--”  
   
“If you’re clean.” Hux shrugged one shoulder and reached down to grip his ass cheeks in both hands. He pulled them apart just a little, not enough to show Ren his hole but enough to make him lose his mind, fall onto the bed and crawl onto Hux.  
   
“You’re hardcore,” Ren said, heart pounding.  
   
“You have no idea,” Hux said.  
   
It wasn’t a line: there was real reckless psycho shit wheeling in his eyes, and for a moment Ren was sure he would come all over Hux just for the sight of it. He’d dreamed of this moment since puberty. A wicked, pretty thing all spread out for him and asking him: _come in, come on, come find out how dark it is in here, how good it will feel to give in_.  
   
“Do you really trust me,” Ren asked, “Or is this part of your self destructive binge?”  
   
“Can’t both be true?”  
   
“I don’t want to destroy you.” Ren’s eyes burned. “You’re perfect.”  
   
Hux laughed. “You don’t even know me.”  
   
“Are you still drunk?”  
   
“I was never drunk.”  
   
“You were getting there.”  
   
“Yes, and then you came along.” Hux writhed up against Ren, arching and moaning like he was suffering for the lack of Ren’s cock inside him. “You came along and _rescued_ me,” Hux said, mocking.  
   
“You do need rescuing.” Ren grabbed Hux’s jaw and held it, made him meet his eyes. “Don’t you?”  
   
“I’m past that, sadly. But if you could fuck me hard, like you said you would, I would appreciate it.”  
   
“You want my bare dick up your ass? My come leaking out of you?”  
   
“Yes.” All the mocking amusement left Hux’s eyes. He leaned up onto his elbows and nipped softly at Ren’s lips, evading Ren’s attempts to kiss him deeper. “Please,” Hux said. “There’s nothing in the world I want more than that.”  
   
“Why?” Ren wasn’t sure why he was ruining this; he trusted Hux, though his rational mind couldn’t explain why, and wanted this more anything, too.  
   
“Why?” Hux blinked a few times, boggling at the question. “Because--  I don’t know! You feel so _real_. I want more, all of it, please--”  
   
Ren didn’t know how to tell Hux that he felt the same thing about him, this singular realness that he hadn’t even known he was lacking before tonight. In lieu of an explanation he kissed Hux, flattening him to the mattress and finally capturing his mouth completely while he reached down between Hux’s legs and felt for the hot, tiny pucker of his hole, making Hux gasp over and over while he fluttered his fingertips there.  
   
“How long?” Ren asked.  
   
Hux threw his arm over his face and moaned, his hole twitching timidly against Ren’s touch.  
   
“Over a year,” he muttered.  
   
“Damn, baby.”  
   
“Do not call me that!” Hux flung his arm away and glowered up at Ren, fixing him with a look of the most precious defiance. Ren couldn’t help thinking _baby, baby_ as he kissed it away.  
   
It was weird, Ren agreed: he didn’t usually employ endearments himself. But Hux just pulled things out of him with surgical grace, reaching straight into Ren’s chest and unlocking little doors that lead to winding hidden passages.  
   
“What do you like?” Ren asked, crawling over to the bedside table’s drawer for lubricant.  
   
“Fuck me hard with your big cock,” Hux said, a little flatly. “Do you really need further instruction?”  
   
“I could eat you out. Get you nice and relaxed for it.”  
   
The sudden flush on Hux’s face was obscene. He shook his head.  
   
“Maybe later,” he said, voice pinched. “I’ve never. Uh.”  
   
“Where are you from?” Ren asked, hovering over him with the lube.  
   
Hux sniffed. “Isn’t your timing a little off? You’ve got me naked on my back in your bed, but you’re back to chatting me up?”  
   
“I’m full of surprises,” Ren said. He slicked his fingers, noticing how hungrily Hux watched him do so. “Seriously though. You’ve got an accent.”  
   
“I’m surprised you didn’t mention it sooner. It’s usually the first thing that comes up after some stupid remark about my hair.”  
   
“I like your hair, by the way.”  
   
Hux grinned. “I was born in Belfast, but I grew up just outside of London.”  
   
“And you went to school there, in the UK?”  
   
“Just until university. That’s when I came here. How is any of this relevant?”  
   
“Trying to figure out why you’ve never been rimmed. Thought maybe it was a regional thing.”  
   
“You’re absurd.” Hux was trying to chew away his smile. “Where are _you_ from, that you find my lack of experience in this regard so alarming?”  
   
“The west coast.”  
   
“Of course. And how did you end up here?”  
   
“My cousin moved here with her husband, for work. This is their place. They’re both chefs and they’re still in newlywed mode, it’s gross. You’ll meet them.”  
   
Hux’s eyebrows shot up. “I will?”  
   
“I mean. When you’re leaving, maybe. If they’re out there in the kitchen or something. I’m gonna put my fingers in you now.”  
   
“Right. Well. Get on with it then, thank you.”  
   
Ren opened his dry hand over Hux’s stomach, to see if he was trembling there. He was, and he looked unamused when he saw Ren noticing this. Ren swooped down to kiss him just over his belly button as he brought his slick fingers to Hux’s hole.  
   
“You don’t have to handle me with care,” Hux said, flexing. “In fact I’d rather you didn’t.”  
   
“Just trying not to wreck your ass on the first go.”  
   
“First?” Hux looked surprised again. His eyelids lowered as Ren’s finger worked into him, not as slow as it might have but with enough finesse to keep it from hurting.  
   
“Want to fuck you again later,” Ren said. “It’s only, like, seven o’clock.”  
   
For some reason this made Hux laugh, which made him clench up tight around Ren’s finger. He was blushing, too. Ren reached up to pinch Hux’s right nipple in a kind of fond, chastising gesture that felt too easy, like all of this. He teased a second finger around the rim of Hux’s hole and surged up to lick across his mouth when his breath hitched.    
   
“Go on,” Hux said, pupils fattening when Ren lifted his face. “I don’t-- Don’t mind being a little sore, after. Feels good, ah. I like being fucked sore by a worthy dick.”  
   
Now Ren laughed. Hux looked embarrassed and squeezed up tight around his finger again.  
   
“You had some real rough trade in the past, is that it?” Ren asked. “Someone who didn’t take care of this sweet little hole?”  
   
“Nothing about me is sweet, you’ll find.”  
   
“You’re so wrong.”  
   
Hux opened his mouth, perhaps to again remind Ren he didn’t really know anything about him. Ren found Hux’s prostate before he could speak and rubbed hard, tight circles against it until Hux arched and cried out in a way that could only be described as sweet.  
   
“Have you been taking care of yourself?” Ren asked, withdrawing so Hux could catch his breath.  
   
“Wha-- What?”  
   
“You know what I mean. Do you have toys? Or have you been stuffing your fingers up here at night, dreaming of dicks?”  
   
“None of your fuh-- fucking business, _oh_ , yes, again, please, there--”  
   
Ren considered himself something of a maestro when it came to fingering. One had to be, when one’s dick was just shy of ten inches long and thick enough to make the most experienced bottoms he’d been with wince a little when he first pushed in. And Hux was hardly experienced, Ren guessed, at least compared to other guys Ren knew. He was like a collector’s item: he’d been taken out of his box once or twice, handled without the respect such a rare thing deserved, and someone or something kept putting him back in that box for safekeeping.  
   
“I feel like I know you,” Ren observed when he had two fingers deep inside Hux. Their mouths were pressed together and Hux’s leg was hitched up high on his chest so they could kiss, sloppy and wet, while Ren made Hux’s hole just as sloppy, just as wet.  
   
“It’s the magic of lust,” Hux said, panting. “It’s what makes physical intimacy possible. That delusion.”  
   
“Do you often go home with guys in bars? Guys like me?”  
   
“Ah--”  
   
“And ask them to bareback you right out of the gate?”  
   
“I told you, it’s been well over a year since I did this with anyone-- _ah_ , oh-- Yes, faster,   _nhnn_ , like that--”  
   
“See,” Ren said, and he dragged his fingertips slow over Hux’s prostate. “You feel it, too.”  
   
“Feh-- Fuh-- What? What do you want me to say?” Hux tried to blink his eyes clear of the haze that had overtaken them. He was clinging to Ren’s shoulder, holding him close. “That I knew you in a past life? Fine, whatever you want to think, just-- I can’t wait any longer, please, get inside me.”  
   
Ren withdrew his fingers. He considered licking them, then decided Hux wasn’t ready for that level of depravity yet. Maybe around midnight, after Ren had been inside him a couple of times, after Ren’s mouth had been on his ass, after they’d told each other about their fucking childhoods or some shit like that. Suddenly the prospect was dizzying in a good way.  
   
“God, you look so good already,” Ren said, sitting back on his knees to pump his cock a few times while he admired Hux: chest jittering, knees tipped open, that little hole bright pink and shining, ready. Hux was hard again, leaking again, looking like he might go off if Ren so much as blew a soft breath against his balls and up over his shaft.  
   
“You look good, too,” Hux said, his voice creaking like it hurt him to admit it.  
   
Ren tossed his hair back, then worried that he’d exposed an ear. He leaned down over Hux and wanted to protest when Hux stroked his hair behind his left ear, sweeping it away from his face.  
   
“I have big ears,” Ren said, going rigid when Hux’s fingertips stroked over the rim, soft enough to make him shiver.  
   
“You have big everything.” Hux bit his bottom lip, probably regretting that he’d confessed to finding Ren monstrous. “I like it.”  
   
“Do most guys you date look like me?” Ren doubted it, for a number of reasons.  
   
“I haven’t had much time for dating.”  
   
“Too busy with your life of crime.”  
   
“Yes, actually.”  
   
Ren kissed him on the lips, gentle and deliberate, to demonstrate that he was forgiven for being attracted to Ren’s monstrous dimensions, if nothing else. Ren had worked hard to make everything about himself bigger, stronger, more thick-skinned. And here he was, about to fuck a slender security fraudster who had been waiting for over a year for someone like Ren to come along and take him apart. He slid his forearm under the small of Hux’s back, anchoring him in a snug arch before using his other hand to line his cock up.  
   
“Lift your legs,” Ren said.  
   
Hux did, tilting his hips up as he wrapped his legs around Ren’s back. He took a deep breath and held Ren’s gaze. Ren wasn’t sure why he was hesitating, what he was waiting for. He stayed very still when Hux reached down to touch his face: his lips, the side of his nose, his left eyebrow. Hux’s eyes were trusting, calm, undeniably sweet. Ren could see himself in them, and in this reflection he wasn’t ugly.  
   
“This is the first nice thing that’s happened to me in so long,” Hux said, whispering like he was afraid saying so might spoil it.  
   
Ren swallowed down a whimper and pushed into him, watching his face. Hux looked astonished, pained, determined and then mindlessly overcome. He grabbed Ren’s ear, fingernails biting into the back of it as Ren kept sinking in deeper, deeper.  
   
“Oh my god,” Hux said, voice half-choked. “Juh-- Jesus, Christ--”  
   
His accent was different when he was stuffed almost to bursting with cock, Ren noted. Less refined, or something. Ren kept going, slow, until he bottomed out and took a huge breath, fighting the urge to thrust already into Hux’s perfect, clinging heat. He let the same breath out in a long, measured exhale and kissed Hux’s chin.  
   
“Feel okay?” Ren asked, muttering.  
   
Hux’s eyes were closed, mouth open, brow pinched. “You have the biggest cock in the world,” he said, winded.  
   
“Is that a yes, or--”  
   
“Just-- Don’t move. Stay there. Fuhhh, my god, how are you so, so fucking deep--”  
   
Ren nuzzled at Hux’s jaw and let him adjust. After a while Hux was petting him, too, one shaking hand moving over Ren’s shoulders and across the back of his neck. His other hand was still clawed around Ren’s ear as if it was the switch that controlled him and he dared not lose his grip on it.  
   
“Good thing you fit just right,” Ren said when he twitched his hips. 

“My arse?”  
   
“Your sweet fucking ass, yes.”  
   
Hux snorted and then moaned, then his hips were twitching, too, even more eagerly than Ren’s.  
   
The way they moved against each other reminded Ren of his first time, because of the clueless giddy joy of it as they got wilder and louder, both finding their own sort of courage. Ren was usually still putting the moves on guys when he was balls deep in them, because it was part of the fun: being the less affected one, the wielder of the moment while the other guy bounced around within it, crazed for his dick and hanging on his every word. But now Ren was lost, too, and it felt good, letting go and not trying to manage the aesthetics for dramatic effect, just fucking into Hux’s tight, grasping heat like it was the only thing that mattered, hearing himself moan and feeling himself drool onto Hux’s cheek, not minding when Hux laughed.  
   
“I’m gonna come,” Ren warned when his face was buried against Hux’s shoulder and his back was soaked in sweat, hips pumping hard.  
   
“Good,” Hux said, breathy and tired. “Do it, yes, please--”  
   
“You, are you--”  
   
“I can’t-- It’s too much, I-- I’d have to, to learn, you’d have to teach, _hah_ , teach me how to come on your cock--”  
   
Ren groaned and pumped Hux full of come at the thought of _training_ him. Even in the midst of one of the most powerful orgasms he’d had in recent memory, something much softer lifted between his ribs, within his heart, because it was unlikely he could teach such a lesson in one night. So Hux would be back, maybe. So this wasn’t just a fever dream that had left Ren deflated and shivery, feeling as if Hux was the one comforting him as he came down from his climax, Hux’s skinny chest heaving under his own.    
   
Hux hissed when Ren slid out of him: careful, careful, his hand on Hux’s face, thumb stroking his cheek. Hux had gotten sweaty, too, but his was different from Ren’s: less slippery, more humid. Ren kissed his hot neck and along his jaw, his open mouth.  
   
“How do you want to come?” Ren asked, stretched out alongside him and stroking his ribs.  
   
“In your hand,” Hux said. He seemed embarrassed by the request. Ren had great big hands, like the rest of him, and guys had gotten off on them before. He kissed the tip of Hux’s nose and grasped his cock, got him fully hard again.  
   
“Are you close?” Ren asked, pumping while Hux’s legs fell open again.  
   
“Not really.” He gave Ren a bashful smile. “But if you, um.” Hux toyed with one of his nipples, pinching and rubbing. Ren got the idea and lowered his mouth to the other one.  
   
Hux came in Ren’s hand while Ren left teeth marks on his chest, his nipples red and bitten. He spurted just weakly, like the last one had nearly emptied him out, and he was dazed and clingy in the aftermath, rolling easily into Ren’s arms.  
   
“Oh my god,” Hux said after his breath had steadied, his voice muffled against Ren’s chest. “You’re so big.”  
   
“Yeah, you said that. I get that a lot.”  
   
“No, I mean-- but you’re. Just radiating this kind of-- Never mind.”  
   
“Tell me.” Ren’s mouth was in Hux’s hair. At the bar it had been styled neatly into place, and it was all messed up now. Hux smelled amazing, like sex with a hint of whiskey but still so clean, like parts of him had been untouched until this moment, waiting.  
   
“You’re like-- Someone from a story, imbued with this supernatural, um--” Hux was mumbling, face hidden and shoulders going tense inside the circle of Ren’s arms. “Forget it, I’m sex drunk.”  
   
“Are you sore?”  
   
“Of course I’m sore!” Hux fidgeted and peeked up at him. “But not prohibitively, so. Thank you, for that.”  
   
“Prohibitively,” Ren said, mocking his accent. He grinned when Hux nipped at his bottom lip. “Hey,” he said, sweeping his fingers through Hux’s hair. _I really like you_. But that would be stupid, so instead he said, “You hungry?”  
   
“A little.” Hux arched into a lazy full-body stretch, squeaking at the back of his throat when the stretch extended down to his ass. “I feel like I could sleep for days. Like I just scaled a mountain.”  
   
“Sorry it wasn’t better for you.”  
   
“What!” Hux sat up on one elbow and cupped Ren’s cheek, prodding him until he tipped his chin up and met Hux’s eyes. Hux was grinning, looking so sated that he also looked a little crazed. “It was fantastic,” he said. “I never do this. You have no idea how pleased I am with myself right now.”  
   
“Never do-- What?”  
   
“I’m practically agoraphobic. Especially since-- Anyway, you’re the first man who’s ever taken me home from a bar. That’s what I meant when I said you don’t know me. I’m not adventurous. Quite the opposite.”  
   
“But you-- Securities fraud is kind of an adventure.”  
   
“Kind of, but what you’d find, I think, if you’d been in my shoes, is that it’s someone else’s adventure, in most cases. And you’re just dragged along for the ride.”  
   
Ren rolled onto his back and studied Hux, trying to envision him as an agoraphobe, peering out from dirty motel curtains and staring at the ceiling on sleepless nights, wondering when he would get what was coming to him. He took one of Hux’s hands and folded his fingers in toward his palm, kissed his knuckles.  
   
“I want to hear about it,” Ren said. “About the person who dragged you into it.”  
   
Hux’s face changed, eyes darkening. His hand curled into a proper fist under Ren’s kisses.  
   
“Fine,” Hux said. “But you’ve got to tell me why you’re forbidden to be an actor.”  
   
Ren could feel his face undergoing a similar transformation when he thought about Anakin, the whole story. Nobody ever grasped the nuance of it. They just saw Anakin as a villain, and there was no other way to tell it. He was the bad guy, by the end of the story. But he was something else before that, and no one seemed to think that mattered. Not even Ren’s mother.  
   
“I’ve got to eat something first,” Ren said. “You want to order food? I can kind of cook, uh. We always have a bunch of random shit in the fridge.”  
   
“Because you live with chefs?”  
   
Ren felt himself smiling, too late to hide it. Hux had listened to him. He was filing away details, learning things already.  
   
“Yep,” Ren said.  
   
“I want to see you cook. Unless we’ll be interrupted?”  
   
“Nah, they have late shifts, never get home before midnight.”  
   
Hux wore one of Ren’s t-shirts over his underwear. Ren was just in briefs, a little bit hard for the sight of Hux in that shirt, his long bare legs and the way the shirt’s saggy collar hung off of Hux’s left shoulder. He could tell by the way Hux moved at moments that he was sore, though he didn’t seem pained, just like he kept remembering and flexing into the feeling. Hux ate spoonfuls of leftover hummus that Rey had made the day before while Ren attempted to make risotto. It turned out pretty watery and they ate it out of the pan by the stove. The flavor was okay, at least.  
   
“Sorry I basically made you glue for dinner,” Ren said.  
   
“You apologize a lot,” Hux said, still staring into the pot as he scraped up the last bits. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”  
   
“I don’t-- When else did I apologize?”  
   
“Uh, after we fucked? As if I didn’t love it.”  
   
The word _love_ from Hux’s mouth made Ren feel untethered, and he leaned against the counter for balance. The whole evening had been a process of realizing that he was in bad trouble, that Hux was a bomb that had already detonated inside him and there was no point denying that the damage was done. Hux looked up at him with a kind of innocent curiosity and Ren wanted to demand to know who he was working for, why he was doing this to an unemployed artist who’d just begun to figure out how to feel like he was doing okay, like had most of of what he needed. Falling in stupid love with someone who fucked raw after ten minutes of banter and had eyelashes that were like ghosts of the color red was a recipe for things taking a turn back for the worse, probably.  
   
“Well.” Ren took the empty pot to the sink and rinsed it. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. You look good in my shirt.”  
   
“You look good in that,” Hux said. He touched Ren’s ass tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to. He was blushing when Ren glanced over at him. “I mean, your--” Hux pulled his hand back and gestured generally to Ren’s body. “Is there a story behind the tattoos?”  
   
“Some of them.”  
   
“Has it to do with the acting ban?”  
   
“You’re really interested in that, huh?”  
   
“It’s just such an odd thing to say to a stranger at a bar. Or to anyone, really. That you made a solemn vow not to take the stage.”  
   
Hux laughed under his breath. Ren tried not to be hurt by Hux describing himself as a stranger, though of course he was, at least back at the bar.  
   
“Have you heard of Anakin Skywalker?” Ren reached for Finn’s cereal bowl and rinsed it out, just to have something to look at that wasn’t Hux’s face.  
   
“Sounds familiar,” Hux said. “Was he an actor?”  
   
“Yes. He was also my grandfather.”  
   
Ren’s stomach ached like he really had just swallowed half a pot of glue. He didn’t want to talk about this, not yet. “Your turn,” he said.  
   
“My turn?”  
   
“I tell you something about me, you tell me something about you. It’s only fair.”  
   
“Oh.” Hux adjusted Ren’s shirt so that it wasn’t falling off his left shoulder, which caused it to slip down from his right one. “Um, well. Have you heard of Otto Snoke?”  
   
“The-- That guy?” Ren whirled on Hux, mouth agape, and regretted it when he saw how Hux shrank, how he didn’t really want to talk about his thing either. “The crook?”  
   
“I guess you do follow securities fraud news after all.”  
   
“I just-- It was a big deal, what he did. You were involved?” Ren’s gut pinched up hard when he considered that Hux might be pending investigation, awaiting trial, bound for jail.  
   
Hux groaned and tugged the hem of Ren’s shirt down over the tops of his thighs. “Your turn,” he said.  
   
“Oh. Uh, well, I idolized him. My grandfather. He fought in the Korean war. He was a pilot before he was an actor.”  
   
“Was he very famous? I have heard the name. I just don’t follow American film very closely.”  
   
Ren sniffed and tried not to be offended. Anakin was iconic; one didn’t need to be a film buff to have a familiarity with his place in popular culture.  
   
“Yes,” he said. “Very famous, in the early sixties and then in the seventies, and. Then infamous, I guess.”  
   
“Like me,” Hux said.  
   
“Mhmm, maybe more like Snoke.”  
   
Something tense expanded and solidified between them. Hux looked haunted, like Ren’s invocation of Snoke’s name had summoned the old man’s spirit. Ren knew the feeling, and knew he probably looked angry, like he always did when Anakin came up. Why were they talking about this?  
   
“I could rim you now,” Ren said, still with an edge of something angry.  
   
“Okay,” Hux said, nodding. “I bet, um. It might feel good. After, you know. Your previous attentions.”  
   
Ren fell in love with Hux again then, or close enough to it. He crossed the kitchen in two steps and pulled Hux to him, hovered just short of kissing him and massaged his fingers into the small of Hux’s back, through the t-shirt.  
   
“I hope you got away with it,” Ren said. He knew he should probably let it drop, but wouldn’t be able to get it up again if he was worried about Hux potentially heading for prison, doing this reckless thing because he had nothing to lose.  
   
“Some would say I did.” Hux’s eyes were hard, but he was soft in Ren’s arms, letting Ren hold him close. “I was caught, and there was a trial. Infinite probation and financial ruin were my punishment. My lawyer made it look like I was enslaved to this culture, going through the motions like a robot because someone had told me to. There was-- I had to testify about my father beating me-- oh Jesus why am I telling you this, yes, eat my ass, please.”  
   
Ren felt like his organs had been swiftly removed and then stuffed back in too quickly to get everything returned to its rightful place. He held Hux’s gaze, watching it slip from desperate to defiant and then back to that sweet silent pleading, like he was asking Ren to please just read his mind.  
   
“My grandfather killed himself,” Ren said. And then, because that didn’t seem equivalent to admitting you’d been beaten as a child, “I tried it myself, when I was fifteen. I spent most of what should have been my junior year of high school in a psychiatric hospital.”  
   
“But you’re all right now?” Hux blurted, looking terrified.  
   
“Sure,” Ren said, mild and sincere, wanting to reassure him. “I have some impulse control problems. Anger management stuff. But I didn’t even really want to die back then.”  
   
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Hux winced and shook his head. “I don’t know why we’re talking like this. It’s my fault, I just-- Devolve, without legal counsel telling me what to say, I don’t know how to be around people anymore--”  
   
“Shh, it’s okay.” Ren kissed him, to demonstrate the truth of this. Hux responded timidly at first, then grabbed Ren’s face and pressed his tongue against Ren’s with what felt like gratitude. “I like the way you talk,” Ren said, muttering this against Hux’s lips.  
   
“My accent?”  
   
“No-- Yes, that too. All of it.”  
   
Ren kissed Hux again and backed him toward the bedroom. Hux seemed glad not to talk, and they got onto the bed without discussion. Hux rolled onto his stomach and looked back at Ren, pleading again, asking to have his mind read.  
   
“I’ll be gentle,” Ren said, giving Hux a look that said otherwise, though he meant it. He slid Hux’s underwear off and parted his cheeks with two hands, moaning under his breath at the sight of Hux’s well-used hole, cleaned of come now but still bright and puffy, calling to Ren in some ancient language of trust and need. Asking for comfort.  
   
Hux gasped at the first breath Ren exhaled against his nervous, clenching rim. He made a soft, lost little noise when Ren licked him very delicately, his cock throbbing for how sacred this moment seemed. Hux’s thighs were already shaking.  
   
“Oh,” Hux said, face buried against the twisted sheets, shoulders twitching. Ren licked him again, now with the broadest flat of his tongue, slow. “Ah--”  
   
“You like that?” Ren asked, lips still close enough to bump against Hux’s hole.  
   
“Yes-- Yeah, please--”  
   
“You taste good.” It was true: the perfect combination of clean skin dirtied by sweaty fucking. Hux had wiped himself down before they ate, but his scent was still tinged with a hint of Ren’s come. “Could do this all night, if you like.”  
   
Hux whimpered in response, pressing his hips back. Ren took his cue and dove in, licking and sucking, pressing his tongue into Hux’s hole and relishing the softness of it, dragging his cock against the mattress as he thought about how deep and hard he’d fucked the tired, tender hole he was feasting on.  
   
“Jesus,” Hux said, again in that slightly different accent.  
   
“Tell me how it feels.”  
   
“Really fucking good, ah-- So good, please--”  
   
“Please what?”  
   
“Please-- Keep going, keep doing that, please--”  
   
“Are you hard?”  
   
“Yes!”  
   
“Up on your knees. Show me.”  
   
Ren leaned back to watch Hux struggle up onto his hands and knees, ass presented and wet, Ren’s shirt hanging loose around him. Hux turned and gave Ren a sheepish, needy, uncertain look. Ren grasped the base of his cock and exhaled through his nose, glad that he’d already nutted within the hour. Otherwise he might have blown his load onto Hux’s quivering ass cheeks just for this sight of his pretty cock hanging full and untouched between his legs, balls pulled up tight like he was close already.  
   
“You’re fucking beautiful like this,” Ren said, stroking himself.  
   
“Touch me,” Hux said, turning away as he spoke, as if he was ashamed of this begging, or of being called beautiful. His knees shuffled apart on the mattress, thighs parting more widely. “Anything, please.”  
   
Ren obliged, sliding both hands over Hux’s ass cheeks and spreading them with his thumbs, just shy of touching his sensitive, waiting hole. He moved his hands upward, to the small of Hux’s back and then under the shirt, curiously caressing what felt like scar tissue just below his shoulder blades.  
   
Hux flinched and went tense all over. Ren remembered what he’d said in the kitchen. _I had to testify--_  
   
“I thought you were eating my arse?” Hux said, speaking sharply to mask the shake in his voice.  
   
“Sorry.”  
   
Ren’s heart was an anchor, always dragging him down despite anything good that might be happening, things that should outweigh his need to descend into melancholy but never did. He wanted to push the shirt out of the way and kiss Hux’s scars, gently and with ceremony. Understanding that Hux would hate that, he kissed him over his tailbone and then moved down toward his hole, slowly, feeling some of the tension in Hux’s posture start to drain away.  
   
Hux gasped when Ren took hold of his cock, and the mood was almost recaptured. Ren felt a nervous pressure to speak, to fill the air with words that would erase what hadn’t been said. He tugged on Hux’s balls with his other hand and breathed against his hole before giving it a tiny lick.  
   
“So you like this?” Ren asked, struggling to think about anything other than those scars. He was still very hard; he couldn’t deny that he was attracted to some sense of misery that was laced over Hux, something Hux needed saving from. “You like having the owner of the worthy cock that fucked you down here, making amends with his tongue? Soothing your sore little hole in penance?”  
   
“My god,” Hux said. He laughed against his forearm. “The owner?”  
   
“What, you’ve never thought of this as your possession?” Ren squeezed Hux’s cock tight in his palm and grinned at the strangled noise Hux made.  
   
“Puh-- Possession?” Hux bucked in Ren’s grip, whining. “I’m more likely to think of it as my body.”  
   
“How about when someone’s inside you? When my big cock was in here, did this belong to me?”  
   
Ren licked Hux’s hole before he could answer. Hux rolled his hips back again, greedy.  
   
“Kinda felt like it belonged to me,” Ren said, letting one of his teeth drag against the tender skin on the inside of Hux’s ass cheek, close to his hole. “All snug and warm and holding me so tight. Mhmm, god, I want to fuck you again. But your sore little hole isn’t ready for that yet, is it?”  
   
“Ahh-- No, I mean, maybe, I don’t know--”  
   
“Nah, I’m gonna let you recover.” Ren licked him again, pressed his tongue inside, closed his eyes and listened to Hux’s increasingly high-pitched, astonished noises. He held Hux’s cock a little tighter, pumped him slow and felt it jump against his palm. “Later,” Ren promised, breathing this hotly against Hux’s twitching hole. “I’ll let you rest, keep you naked in my bed a while, and when you’re ready I’ll mount up again, push in there, let you feel me owning this hole, so deep, making it mine.”  
   
Hux shouted and came, which took Ren off guard. He’d been so intent on delivering his monologue, he hadn’t noticed how hard Hux was trembling.  
   
“Ren,” Hux said, tired and small while Ren continued to stroke his dick, getting every drop out and only relenting when Hux hissed and pulled his thighs together around Ren’s wrist, overstimulated. Ren kissed his hole and released him, soothing his hand over Hux’s side as he collapsed, eyes still closed and mouth open around his heavy breath. Ren crawled up to spoon him, snuggling his trapped, leaking dick up against the swell of Hux’s ass in the process.  
   
“Do you need to sleep, baby?” Ren asked, mouthing this question onto Hux’s hot cheek.  
   
“Nhn,” Hux said, apparently so exhausted that he wasn’t going to bother protesting the pet name.  
   
“Want you to suck on my dick first,” Ren said, as sweetly as he could. He pushed his hand up under the shirt, which was damp now with Hux’s sweat-- Ren would never wash it. Hux gasped and arched when Ren played with his nipple. “Can you do that for me?”  
   
“Yes.” Hux blinked his eyes open and peered up at Ren with what looked like adoration, or at least extreme gratitude. “But I-- I’ve never sucked one like yours before.”  
   
“Like mine?”  
   
“Big and-- Thick.” Hux rolled toward Ren, reaching down to feel the shape of his cock through his underwear.  
   
Ren grunted and thrust against Hux’s hand. He wouldn’t last long.  
   
“Gonna swallow my come?” Ren asked, lips moving just over Hux’s as they stared at each other.  
   
Hux was lust-blown and dazed, so soft in Ren’s arms. He nodded, licked his lips.  
   
“Good boys swallow.” Ren traced Hux’s mouth with his fingertips. He pushed them inside a little and moaned at the way Hux’s lips sealed around his fingers, puffy and wet. “Is that right?”  
   
“Mhmm.” Hux’s eyes fluttered shut. He sucked on Ren’s fingers and let Ren pinch the tip of his tongue with them, pushing it out like it an offering.  
   
“You were so ready for me.” Ren reached down and pulled out his cock, stroking himself while keeping his eyes locked on Hux’s. “At that bar. Just itching for it, weren’t you? I could have pulled you into my lap in front of all those guys. Could have held you there, let your face get all blushy while everybody in the place watched you squirming on my thighs, getting my dick hard with your fidgety little ass.”  
   
Hux moaned, presumably at the thought, and opened wide for Ren’s dirty kiss. He pulled free either because he remembered where Ren’s mouth had been or because he was eager to move down and kiss Ren’s cock. He licked at Ren’s nipples on the way there, and lapped at his stomach, rubbing his face against the muscles there.  
   
“I want you to do such filthy things to me.” Hux looked up at Ren with a kind of savage, demanding heat in his eyes, his hand wrapping around the base of Ren’s cock. “Make me feel owned.” Hux nodded, languid and hypnotic. He held Ren’s gaze and licked at Ren’s cockhead with the same humid, drowsy tempo. “I did feel it, before. I was so full. Every breath I took was yours, when you were that deep inside me.”  
   
“Fuck,” Ren said, wounded by how impressed he was, how infatuated, how completely and ironically owned he felt when Hux took him into his mouth: not enough, just a few inches, but that wet heat was amazing, and it was good to be inside Hux again, even a little. Ren wanted to live there.  
   
He ended up coming mostly on Hux’s face, but Hux managed to swallow some and licked more off his lips afterward, crawling up to kiss Ren’s mouth before collapsing wholly onto his chest, spent.  
   
“I just need to shut my eyes for a moment,” Hux muttered, already falling asleep. The t-shirt was all twisted up and his bare legs were spilled out around Ren’s thighs, careless and spread, his naked ass drawing Ren’s hands. “Can I-- Is it okay?”  
   
“Sure.”  
   
As if Ren was going to object to the idea of Hux falling asleep in his arms. He kissed the top of Hux’s head and tracked the gradual loosening of his already surrendered muscles, listened as Hux’s breath grew deep and even, his soft cock squished over Ren’s hipbone and pulsing with little echoes of his heartbeat.  
   
Ren stroked Hux’s hair and contemplated the guttering candlelight as it played across the ceiling. He felt as if he’d wandered into a wizard’s snare, but he couldn’t blame Hux. Whatever had bewitched him had Hux at its mercy, too. This was a phenomenon that would have to be navigated carefully. Ren would keep Hux safe within it. Delirious and close to sleep himself, he contemplated touching the scar on Hux’s back. His fingers twitched, wanting to trace over that old pain, but he refrained.  
   
_Later_ , he thought, his eyes falling shut. It occurred to him as he dropped off into sleep that if they were doing this, whatever it was, Hux would want to poke at his oldest scars, too.  
   
   
   
   
**  
   
   
   
 


	2. Chapter 2

When Ren woke he was confused not by the warm body curled against his chest but by the noises from out in the apartment, as if Hux had always been there and Rey and Finn were the interlopers. Once he had reoriented himself in reality he pulled the blankets up over Hux, sheltering his bare ass from any potential onlookers. Sometimes Rey burst into Ren’s room to say goodnight or invite him to partake in leftovers from the restaurant. The lock had been broken for months due to an incident wherein Ren had kicked the door knob off, relating to a phone call from his mother. He waited, holding Hux against him, half-turned toward the door as he listened to Rey and Finn moving about in the kitchen and then through the hallway. 

Rey’s light gait halted just outside his door. Ren considered calling out that she shouldn’t come in, but then she would assume he was upset and would come in directly. Instead he kept quiet, hoping she would think he was asleep and that she would not want to wake him. Sometimes she came in anyway, to make sure he’d blown out all his candles. 

He exhaled with relief when he heard Rey moving on toward the master bedroom. He wasn’t even sure what he felt so tense about: she would be surprised that he’d brought someone home, but it wasn’t against the house rules, and he’d already told Hux that he lived with his cousin and her husband. He felt like he had to protect Hux from something, as if Rey posed a threat. She was anything but, really the most protective force in Ren’s life despite the fact that she was younger. Maybe it was that dynamic that he didn’t want Hux to witness, since Hux already seemed to think there was something suspiciously immature about Ren. 

Hux stirred under Ren’s arm and pressed back against him in a kind of sleepy stretch. Ren was mildly disappointed; he’d wanted to watch Hux sleep for a while. It was not something he’d done before or thought he’d ever do, but with Hux it felt strangely right, like many things so far. Ren kissed Hux’s ear when Hux turned toward him. He braced himself for a look of confusion or regret. 

“What time is it?” Hux mumbled, still comfortably slumped in Ren’s arms. 

“Mhmm, don’t know. Probably around midnight, since my roommates just got home.” 

“Oh, the chefs?” Hux tensed and glanced at the door. Ren could hear Rey’s voice, and it sounded like Finn had the television on in the living room.

“Yeah,” Ren said. He wanted to kiss Hux’s face, which seemed especially soft from sleep. Hux was still wearing Ren’s shirt, and Ren thought again of how it would smell like Hux, how he wouldn’t wash it after Hux left. At least not until they had plans to meet again. “They come home late, eat whatever they brought from their shift and then sleep until like, noon.” Ren typically slept until at least noon himself, with no work-related schedule as an excuse. “What’s your sleep routine like?” he asked. He wanted to know everything, all of Hux’s details, as many as Hux would allow.

Hux smiled like the question was funny. “I usually drink too much while staring at my laptop and then wake up at three in the morning with a mild headache, lie awake for hours going over everything I’ve done wrong recently or in the distant past, then drift off again around daybreak.”

Ren gave in to his impulse to kiss Hux’s face then: the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, the corner of his lips. Hux sighed and pressed into the feeling, eyes closed. He was still smiling, just faintly. 

“So that’s the caliber of person you’ve got in your bed,” Hux said. “Sorry to say.” 

“Don’t be sorry. I do the same thing, more or less.” 

“You wake up in the middle of the night and worry for hours at a time?” Hux looked doubtful. 

“No,” Ren admitted. “But I have nightmares, sometimes.” 

“About what?” 

Ren wasn’t sure how to describe them. The worst ones felt like glimpses into some alternate future, and when he was younger and more prone to whimsy he used to think he was seeing images from the hellish limbo where he would have ended up if he had killed himself at fifteen. He didn’t believe in that sort of thing anymore, but his subconscious held onto some of the imagery anyway. He also had nightmares about murdering his father, accidentally or on purpose, but they didn’t need to talk about that now. 

“Just sort of generally about death,” he finally said, and he wasn’t sure why he loved it so much when Hux laughed at this, but he did, and kissed Hux on the lips for it. 

They were still kissing when Ren heard Rey’s footsteps padding toward his room again. He froze, and he felt Hux tense up terribly, possibly due to Ren’s own overreaction. Rey must have heard them talking. Ren’s heart pounded when he realized what he was afraid of: that she would call out his old name and he’d have to explain to Hux why only she and his mother called him that anymore. 

“It’s just my cousin,” he said, whispering this against Hux’s lips. 

“You seem frightened,” Hux said after they’d listened to Rey’s footsteps departing again. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just. There’s no lock on the door, uh. I mean, it’s broken, so. We don’t have many boundaries, we’re close-- Sometimes she just bursts in. But she won’t.” Ren licked his lips, as nervous about sharing his own secrets as he was anxious to devour all of Hux’s. “Can’t let them find the little criminal I’m hiding in here,” he said, hoping this would shift the mood back toward the one they’d been in before they drifted to sleep.

For a half a second Ren was afraid he’d said something horrible and insulting. Then he felt Hux getting hard against his thigh beneath the blankets. 

“Yes,” Hux whispered, eyes widening. “Please, keep me hidden. Don’t let anyone find me.”

“Would you be in very much trouble if they did?” Ren asked. He was getting hard, too, from the quickening of Hux’s breath and the way he’d started to squirm. 

“Mhmm,” Hux said, nodding quickly. His arms were tucked against Ren’s chest, and he opened his legs around Ren’s thigh when it slotted up between them, pressing against his cock. “Yes, I-- They’ll take me away and lock me up. You have to let me hide here.” 

Hux spoke as if they were tucked into a corner of a dark alleyway, as if police were dashing by in the street while Ren kept his back to them, his sheer size obscuring Hux’s trembling body within the shadows. Anyway, this was what Ren had in mind as he rolled on top of Hux. He assumed Hux was fantasizing similarly and was almost afraid to hope that he’d found someone who could keep up with his theatrical dirty talk, which most people either laughed at or failed to respond to with convincing enthusiasm. 

“Don’t worry, baby,” Ren said, murmuring this against Hux’s parted lips. Hux didn’t protest the endearment this time, maybe because it was part of their game. “You’re safe here. I got you.”

“Please,” Hux said, very softly.

Ren kissed him, grinding his cock down against Hux’s and struggling to keep from moaning in a way that would reveal what was going on in here. Rey would be surprised to learn he’d actually brought someone home; he never had before. But maybe she’d already figured it out from their whispered voices through the door. Someone had turned the volume on the TV up, anyway. 

They stayed entirely under the blankets, which had been transformed into a kind of protective tent in Ren’s imagination. He felt a bit like a tent himself, stretched over Hux and huddled around him, staying close while he pushed his cock into Hux again, relishing the way Hux clawed him closer and buried his muffled whimpers against Ren’s shoulder as they pressed together as tightly as they could within their blanket-sanctuary.

“Got you, nice and safe,” Ren said, murmuring this against Hux’s ear as he began to thrust: slow, quiet, careful not to make the bed creak. Hux made a little _mphf_ sound in response and turned his face against Ren’s, nodding. His legs were hitched up against Ren’s sides, and his ass clenched with every slow inward push of Ren’s cock. 

“Will you make me go?” Hux asked. Ren pulled back to look at him and Hux batted his eyelashes, playing a part. “After you’ve come inside me? Will I _ha_ \-- have to leave then, will they find me dripping wet with your come when you’re through with me?” 

Ren groaned with approval, probably too loudly. “No, no. You can stay. I’ll hide you here, when you’re all fucked out and sloppy, when your legs are shaking--”

“Nn, yes, I’ll need it more than ever, I’ll be so sore and tired and, and-- Don’t let them find me, find me like that--”

“Hux--”

Ren expected they would both last a while, because of their earlier activities and because they were both still a little dozy with sleep, but when someone dropped a plate into the sink out in the kitchen Hux came with a bitten-off gasp, splattering Ren’s chest. Ren came hard and almost without warning for the way Hux clenched up around him and for the sight of the light bruising on Hux’s neck from Ren’s kissing, exposed in the moonlight when he threw his head back as he came. Unloading into Hux felt like being tugged over a ledge, and Ren pressed shuddering breaths to Hux’s mouth as he trembled above him, glad to be in free fall. 

They stayed connected while Ren softened inside Hux, kissing languidly and giving each other dopey grins. The sacred feeling growing between them made Ren think of childhood and the purest joys he’d known then, things that felt almost primordial. He wanted to say all of this to Hux but was afraid to scare him. Out in the apartment, he heard the heavy snap of the kitchen’s light being flipped off. He slid out of Hux very carefully as Rey and Finn made their way toward their bedroom, just in case Rey stopped to peek in. 

Though she didn’t, and though the house went quiet and fully dark not long afterward, he stayed fully under the blanket with Hux as if it was sheltering them from some inclement weather, only the tops of their heads poking out, both of them nearing sleep again but tugging each other out of it with a sigh or a peck on the lips. Ren almost wanted to ask Hux if he wanted to continue their little fantasy about his hiding here even outside of sex, but that would be ridiculous. 

“When you were fucking me just then,” Hux said, whispering. Ren’s eyes snapped open. Hux was playing with the ends of Ren’s hair, looking bashful. “I was thinking-- you’ll laugh, because it’s funny, but in my mind it was hot-- I was imagining I’d run into an alley someplace, that I would have been trapped and caught if you’d not allowed me into your, you know-- Into this sort of cardboard box you lived in.”

“What!” Ren barked with laughter, too startled by the perfect weirdness of that to even be offended.

Hux put his hand over Ren’s mouth and laughed silently, shoulders bouncing. “I know it’s stupid,” he said, still whispering. “But it was like a waking sex dream. Just weird enough to be hot. You fucking me in this soggy box on the ground, between trash cans. Oh, shut up, I shouldn’t have told you.” 

“So sex with me is like a waking dream?” Ren said, his voice muffled by Hux’s palm.  

Hux snorted. He was smiling as if to confirm this, however. 

“You can live with me in my cardboard box indefinitely,” Ren said, not wanting to think about how it wasn’t an entirely far-fetched concept, considering he was living here rent free and had never truly had a place of his own. He also wasn’t sure he should reveal that he was sincere: Hux could stay, of course, within whatever paltry security Ren was able to provide. Ren settled his head onto the pillow beside Hux’s and gathered him up again. 

“That’s generous,” Hux said. His eyes were closed. He hummed under his breath when Ren kissed his eyelashes.

“It does feel like a dream,” Ren said. “I wasn’t just teasing you.” 

Hux hummed again, possibly in agreement. Then he was asleep. 

Ren slept soundly through morning as usual. Sometimes even afternoon didn’t wake him and he would blink awake at dusk. Those were not good days; he usually tried to redeem the lost momentum by going out to Hammerheads or the like and pouring his unspent inertia into any attractive man he could find. He felt distressed by this long-accepted fact of his life when he woke, as if it had been a nightmare, or a preemptive betrayal of Hux, who had startled awake along with him. Ren turned toward the door and jerked with alarm when he saw what had caused them both to wake in either late morning or early afternoon; he couldn’t yet tell, and couldn’t quite read the expression on Rey’s face when she gaped at them from the doorway.

“Oh!” she said, coming back to herself after the shock of seeing Ren cuddled up around a red-haired stranger. “Sorry!” She turned away and pulled the door nearly shut. “I was just-- Never mind. I’ll come back later.” 

“What’s wrong?” Ren asked. 

“Nothing at all! Not important. Sorry.” 

She shut the door. Ren listened to her footsteps hurrying away before turning back to Hux, who was scooting to the end of the bed somewhat frantically. Once there, holding the blanket against himself, Hux groped for something on the floor: his pants. He pulled his cell phone from the front pocket and cursed.

“It’s almost noon,” he said. When he glanced up at Ren a kind of reservation leapt into his eyes: either sheepishness or regret. 

“So?” Ren said. He heard himself sounding angry, already defensive. So much for their magical night transitioning easily into the rest of their lives spent together, or whatever. Of course that line of thinking seemed insane already, though it seemed even more insane that he might let Hux walk out of there and not see him again for days or weeks or ever. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked when Hux just went on peering at him with a saddish sort of confusion. 

“Appointment? No, I don’t-- Do anything, anymore. As I told you.” 

“Not anything? Not even routine maintenance?”

Hux scowled. Ren was almost glad to have annoyed him. It was better than that wounded look he’d just had on. 

“Routine maintenance?” Hux said. “What does that even mean? I’m not a car.”

“I meant like doctors and shit.” Ren managed to stop himself before adding: or probation officers. 

“What doctors would you expect me to be seeing?”

It was such an oddly angry question that Ren could only sit there staring at Hux, wondering if he’d missed a step. Hux’s face turned red, and Ren realized that he’d heard now how defensive that sounded. Wanting to spare him, Ren reached for his own phone when he heard it ding with a new text message. The battery was almost dead, and the message was from Rey.

_Who is that guy??_

Ren realized it would be rude to respond, but Hux, rudely, had left the bed and was dressing, so he typed a reply.

_Met him last night._

_He’s cute!_ Rey sent back. Likely she was at a loss for how to otherwise respond to Ren not only allowing someone into his bed but also letting him sleep there. _We’re making breakfast if you two want to join us_.

“Fuck,” Ren said. He dropped his phone onto the bed and watched Hux buttoning his pants. Hux had already put his own shirt back on, Ren’s now tossed onto the end of the bed. Ren had never gotten a good look at those scars on his back.

“What’s wrong?” Hux asked. He was still red-faced and seemed skittish, like he’d been cornered.

“Nothing. She just sounds like my mom.”

“Who-- What?”

“That was my cousin, texting me from the kitchen. Do you want to have breakfast with us?” 

Hux looked at Ren as if he’d just asked him if he’d like to be executed by firing squad at once.

“God, no!” Hux said in an urgent whisper, as if Rey had her ear to the door. He flushed again. “Sorry, I-- I don’t mean to be rude, but. I’m not the most sociable person these days--”

“It’s fine.” Ren forced a laugh and sprang up out of the bed as if he was feeling spritely and not defeated. Hux glanced down at his swinging cock, at least. “I was just kidding, anyway,” Ren said, adjusting himself while Hux watched. “But. I could. If you’re hungry, I could get a plate of whatever they’re cooking and bring it in here for you.”

He’d rushed that last part out though he knew it was unwise. 

“Well.” Hux shuffled in place and looked down at his bare feet. “I can’t seem to find one of my socks, and they are professional chefs.” 

“Your socks?” Ren said. 

Hux ignored the bad joke. “So,” he said. He was holding the one sock he had located, worrying it between his hands. “I think it would be sort of foolish to, um. To not accept a free gourmet meal. I’m near broke, by the way. That’s another fun fact about me.” 

“I don’t have a dime to my name,” Ren said. This wasn’t technically true. He had a trust fund. He just didn’t like to confess this, and had always had a hard time thinking of it as something that belonged to him, such was the baggage that came with it and with everything to do with his family. One of the reasons Rey didn’t ask him to pay rent was that Leia had bought this apartment for her and Finn as a wedding gift. Leia hadn’t stipulated that her deadbeat son would therefore be granted lodging at his discretion, and had in fact berated Ren savagely when he accepted Rey’s offer to crash here. According to Leia it was cruel to foist himself on newlyweds who needed their privacy, but Rey had insisted after Ren’s latest fight with Han, which had come closely on the heels of a bad one with Leia.

“I’ll stay,” Hux said, frowning when Ren looked up at him. “If you still want me to.”

“What?” Ren swallowed. He felt queasy. “Of course I want you to. Good.” 

“You look like you’re going to be sick, are you all right?”

“I was just thinking about my mother. Never mind. I’ll tell Rey to make a plate for you.” 

Ren grabbed a pair of baggy sweats from the floor, stepped into them and left the room without looking back at Hux, afraid he would change his mind. He shut the door behind him and tugged up his pants before heading toward the kitchen, where he could hear either Rey or Finn beating eggs in a stainless steel bowl. 

It was Finn doing the eggs. Rey was at the stove making bacon. They both looked up and stared when Ren came into the doorway, regretting that he hadn’t taken the time to put on a shirt. Finn was still riding the high of the wedding and honeymoon and a recent promotion at the restaurant, but his tolerance for Ren had a time limit and Ren was well aware that it was approaching. 

“Hey, man,” Finn said, only frowning a little at the sight of Ren. “Did your friend take off?”

“No. He’ll-- He’s hungry, but. I’ll just bring him a plate. He’s not ready to, like. Meet my family.” 

“But you like him.” Rey was grinning, eyes bright. “I can tell.”

“How can you tell. I’m just standing here.” He’d been careful to not even smile. 

“Well, he’s still in your room, for one thing. You never bring people home.” 

Ren grunted, not sure if he was bothered or touched that she’d referred to the apartment as his home. He joined Rey at the stove, comforted by the smell of high-quality bacon. Though they often made elaborate meals here, the breakfasts that Finn and Rey prepared were usually well done but simple, basic comfort foods cooked perfectly. Ren loved them; sometimes they were his only reason for getting out of bed before mid-afternoon. He loved living with Rey and Finn. If he was honest with himself, he was a little afraid to live alone. Last time he tried that it hadn’t gone well. 

“What’s he like?” Rey asked. She bumped Ren with her elbow when he didn’t immediately respond. “Will he really not come out and meet us?” 

“Maybe later. I don’t know. He’s British, sort of.” 

“Sort of? What’s that mean? Has he got an accent? What does he do for a living?”

Rey reminded Ren of Leia at times like this, though Rey was more enthusiastic than judgmental and nosy. He wasn’t sure how to answer the question about Hux’s profession. Ren didn’t technically have one at the moment either, though he was working on an interactive show that incorporated music with performance art and set design. It was a kind of elevated, avant garde haunted house, though he’d decided not to use that term in his materials. People would laugh, if he did. His art had a history of being laughed at. 

“You’re kind of morose,” Rey observed. She took the bacon from the pan with tongs and laid it across a paper towel-lined plate. “Has the magic faded already? Has he turned into a pumpkin in there?”

Ren smiled at the thought of Hux as a pumpkin, and imagined trying that endearment on him. Likely it wouldn’t go well, but Ren liked the thought of Hux protesting. He thought of mumbling _I fell in love with him last night, help, I’m doomed_. When he glanced over at Rey she was giving him a sympathetic look that seemed to say she understood this already. 

“Here,” she said, reaching for a clean plate. “How do you suppose he likes his eggs?” 

“Uh. Poached?”

“Well, I’m not doing that, he can settle for scrambled. What’s his name, by the way?”

“Hux,” Ren said. He turned to glare when he heard Finn laugh. 

“First or last?” Rey asked, frowning. 

“He’s like me,” Ren said, more irritated than he had a right to be. He was beginning to be in a mood, maybe. “His name is a sensitive matter.” 

“Now even I’m intrigued,” Finn said. 

“Is he a runaway prince?” Rey asked. “Concealing his identity from us commoners?”

Ren scowled at the question. “He’s just a person with a past,” he said, unwisely.

“Oh, boy,” Finn said. 

“We’re only teasing you,” Rey said. She bumped Ren with her hip and accepted the bowl of beaten eggs from Finn. “Pass me that cheese, yeah? Unless Ren’s boyfriend is lactose intolerant.” 

“Don’t call him that.” 

“Fine, your mysterious gentleman. He’s having cheese in his eggs whether he likes it or not. How old is he, by the way? I couldn’t tell by the glimpse I got.” 

“I didn’t ask.” Ren also hadn’t asked if Hux was a first or a last name. They still had a lot of ground to cover. “About the same age as me, I think.” 

As soon as the eggs were finished, Ren escaped with a portion big enough for two, four pieces of bacon on the side. He grabbed two forks and bolted for his bedroom, glad that Hux had stayed hidden. Rey and Finn were too cheery first thing in the morning, and too intent on asking questions that even Ren hadn’t gotten around to yet. 

He opened his bedroom door, afraid he’d find the room empty. Hux was still there, barefoot and seated on the bed, hunched over his phone. 

“I hope you like eggs and bacon,” Ren said, pulling the door shut behind him. “I know in England they eat, like. Beans and tomatoes for breakfast.” 

“You’ve been?” Hux asked. He smiled as if he liked the thought. 

“Yeah, I’ve been everywhere. Here.”

Ren passed the plate to Hux. He looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with it even after Ren handed him a fork. 

“It occurs to me now that I kissed you after you’d eaten my arse,” Hux said. He held the fork awkwardly, in his fist. Ren took a seat across from him on the bed, close enough to reach the plate that was resting in Hux’s lap. 

“Yeah,” Ren said, not sure what the point of mentioning this was. “We kissed a lot, after that.” 

“I-- I really should shower,” Hux said. He watched with what appeared to be mild horror as Ren grabbed a piece of bacon and bit half of it off. “And brush my teeth, and so on.” 

“We can do that after breakfast,” Ren said. He kept his eyes on the plate, aware that he sounded like a lunatic for his assumption that Hux would stay here and do that. Hux had said he was living in a motel, and that he hated it there. Surely this hatred extended to the sad motel room shower. “It’s always better to shower after eating bacon,” Ren said, holding up his half-eaten piece as if it was evidence. “Not before.” 

The corner of Hux’s lips tugged up just a bit. “I suppose that’s true,” he said. He took a bite of the eggs. His eyebrows went up as he chewed them. “That’s very good,” he said after swallowing. “Is there cheese in them?” 

“Yes. You’re not lactose intolerant, are you?”

“Not to my knowledge.” 

“So is Hux your last or first name?” Ren asked, as if this question followed. It might as well. They had to start somewhere.

“Last,” Hux said. He was frowning. Maybe he thought this should have been obvious. “Which is it for you? Ren, I mean.” 

“That’s a long story. So what’s your first name?”

“How could that be a long story, if Ren is your surname or not?”

“Tell me your first name and I’ll explain.” 

Hux rolled his eyes and took a large bite of eggs. “Armitage,” he said, still chewing. 

Ren struggled not to laugh, more at the look on Hux’s face that dared him to try it than at the name itself. “That’s-- Is that a family name?” 

“No. My father--” Hux shook his head. “I come from a peculiar family. To put it kindly. I suspect you do, too, if your surname is so complicated. It’s not Skywalker?”

“No.” Ren darkened just as Hux had when he said _my father_. “Anakin was my mother’s father. And that’s not even the half of it.”

“I’d settle for a quarter of it.” 

Ren smirked down at the plate. “I had a good therapist,” he said. “That year-- During my shitty year, when I was fifteen. She encouraged me to indulge my need for escapism rather than dismissing it as childish or whatever. The exercise was so successful in helping me regain some confidence that I decided to change my name. Legally. My parents were extremely against it, but she convinced them.” 

He heard himself sounding like he was reciting a speech or mounting a defense. Hux was chewing bacon, looking thoughtful when Ren glanced up at him. 

“I don’t tell most people that,” Ren said. “Don’t even tell most of them what my first name is.” 

“Then we have that in common. What is it? The one you chose, I mean. And your given one, if it’s not too, uh. Painful to say.” 

“Kylo.” He gave Hux a look that probably mirrored the one he’d just given Ren: daring him to laugh. Hux only looked confused. “That’s the name I chose. Kylo Ren. He was a character I made up, once--” Ren doesn’t talk about this, ever. How is all of it happening so fast with Hux, just because he asked Hux’s name? But names aren’t nothing. They have weight. “I was Ben, before,” he said, mumbling. “So you might hear Rey calling me that. It’s funny, it doesn’t bother me when she does it. I think because she was the only person who liked Ben, back then. When my mother calls me that it’s like-- I don’t know. Like a reminder that I murdered Ben.” 

Now he really had to stop talking. He ate another piece of bacon in three bites. 

“Kylo Ren,” Hux said, slowly, as if he was trying to place where he’d heard that name before. “So you became your alter ego? Literally? That’s a feat. I wish I had one, so I could become someone else and never look back at the idiot Snoke duped and tried to frame.” 

Hux looked like he thought he’d said too much, too. His face was pink. His hair looked dirty, Ren noticed, and the faint hickeys on his neck made him seem particularly unwashed. His shirt was wrinkled from spending the night on the floor. 

“I filled out, around the same time,” Ren said. “I mean-- When I was sixteen, seventeen. I’d shot up in height a few years before and I was like this scarecrow for a while. Something about being Kylo, it just made me feel strong. He was this warrior I’d made up as a kid. Now he’s me, and it was like I-- Grew into him. It felt like a miracle. That I got to be someone else, finally. The real me.” 

He was sure he sounded like an idiot, but for the first time in his life this didn’t seem like a bad thing. He wanted to touch Hux’s scars. Showing Hux his own would certainly be required to earn that kind of trust, and now he had. Some of them, anyway. 

“So you went off to college as Kylo,” Hux said. 

“I mostly went by Ren.” Otherwise he got called Kyle more often than not. “But yeah.”

“That’s a happy ending, then.” 

Hux looked sorry for saying so when Ren met his eyes again. He wasn’t wrong: it was happy, Ren was okay, things were fine. His life was much better, post-Ben, and he had ambitions, he cared about things. Some hard to define element was still missing, however. He’d long feared that he was missing a key ingredient that would mean he was fully and permanently Kylo, in no danger of going back to Ben. 

“Thank you for breakfast,” Hux said. It felt more like he was thanking Ren for telling him the story behind his name. They both scraped at the plate in silence for a while, finishing the last of the eggs. Ren was still hungry. 

“Ready for a shower?” Ren asked. “The one here is nice,” he said, hurrying this out before Hux could say no, that he should get going, that he had his own sad shower back in the motel room. “There’s a window,” Ren said.

“That’s a selling point, for a shower in an apartment building?” 

“The window doesn’t look into the shower, it just provides, you know. Natural light. Ambiance.” 

“Oh, well. I can’t remember the last time I bathed with ambiance. Actually, that’s a lie. I had a lovely master bathroom in my house, before all this-- Before the trial, before they took everything. And rightfully, but. I do think about the window in that bathroom sometimes, especially how it would sort of glow, at dusk, and this particular tree I could see when I was having a bath, on the rare occasion I was home from work before sundown, that was such a decadent tub-- Fuck. I know exactly what you mean about bathroom windows. Yes, they’re wonderful. And please, yes, everything was delicious but I need to wash this greasy feeling off. And my arse is in a real state, perhaps you could help me with that.” 

Hux’s face was blazing now. Ren leaned over the plate and kissed him on the lips. He licked into Hux’s mouth and moaned for the taste of him: messy, salt-tinged, perfect. Who was this person? How was he here? Ren cared very much but was also willing to let those details emerge at a glacial pace over a period of years if that was what Hux wanted. As long as Hux was with him in the meantime, pressing his tongue out to meet Ren’s and holding Ren’s face with both hands. 

“Something about you makes me confessional to an unprecedented degree,” Hux said when Ren pulled free, wanting to continue this while they were naked in the shower together. “I don’t even think I confessed this much at trial. Is that a very good sign, or a warning to turn tail and run for my life?”  

“Well,” Ren said. “Kylo was a warlock who could read minds and make people obey his will.”

“Was? Is he reformed now?”

“Nah, that’s just the one part of him I couldn’t yank into reality with the rest of me.”

Hux grinned as if he was actually charmed by this, not freaked out and ready to flee. Ren had never told anyone outside of family about all of this, or any of it, and he hadn’t even really told them. They just knew.

“If you were to make me obey your will,” Hux said, “What would you have me do, Lord Ren?”

“He wasn’t a Lord.”

“Shh, just go with it.”

“I’d entice you into my lavish bathing chamber,” Ren said. He could feel himself smiling a bit madly just like Hux was; it was too late to pretend this wasn’t already the best day of his life. “And I’d have you wash me, servant-like. Then I’d ask you to present your well-used ass for my stringent inspection.” 

Hux licked his lips and nodded. “Yes, let’s. Let’s go to the-- Let’s do that-- Your roommates aren’t out there, are they?” 

Ren had forgotten there was anyone else on earth, let alone in the apartment. He turned toward the door and heard forks clinking against plates. “They’re eating,” he said. “We should make a break for it now if you don’t want to be seen.”

“Yes.” Hux’s pupils had gotten fat: he looked earnestly enchanted, and glad about it. “Whisk me there, hurry. Keep me out of sight.” 

“Follow me, fugitive.” 

Ren almost winced when he considered that Hux might not want to be called this, but Hux sprang up from the bed and took his hand as if he’d been waiting to hear his true title all his life.

In the hallway, Ren moved cautiously with an eye toward the kitchen, as if Rey and Finn were authorities who would arrest Hux on sight. He held Hux’s hand and they crept soundlessly toward the hall bathroom. Reaching it without incident felt like an actual achievement. Ren hadn’t been this absorbed in any sort of fantasy for as long as he could remember, and having Hux right there with him, just as enthralled, made him feel like he’d blow apart at the seams with glee. He was also still hard, thinking about inspecting Hux’s tender ass and some other things he’d like to do under the hot water. 

Not wanting to rush this, and very grateful for the functioning lock on the bathroom door, Ren took Hux’s face in his hands and tipped his chin slightly upward. He looked down his nose at Hux as if he was examining him for suitability.

“Tell me,” Ren said. He gave Hux’s cheeks a stroke with both thumbs. “Are you unclean?”

“I’m filthy,” Hux said, breathing this out like it was a relief to say so. “Please-- Sir. I need your, your-- Facilities. I can offer certain services to you in exchange.”   

“Hmm, very well.”  

Ren stepped out of his pants and let Hux have a moment to take in his surroundings. It really was a lovely, spacious bathroom, and the window was high enough to offer privacy, long and narrow above the mirror that covered much of the far wall. The shower and tub were separate, both large, and there were double sinks under the mirror. Rey kept a diffuser that smelled of tea tree oil on the counter between the sinks.

“I think I’ve forgotten what real civilization is like,” Hux said. He seemed overcome, shaken from their shared fantasy by the memory of his long-lost luxury. 

“Then let me remind you,” Ren said, not sure if he was in character or not. He turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature while Hux undressed. Ren resisted the urge to look at the scars on Hux’s bare back in the clear, bright light through the window. He stepped into the shower when it was just hot enough and held the door open for Hux. 

“Beautiful,” Hux said. He was looking at Ren, then at the glass-encased shower. “This stonework is nice,” he muttered when he stepped inside, walking through the water to run his hand over the interior wall. 

“You like nice things,” Ren observed. 

“Well, yes. Doesn’t everyone?” 

Ren was sorry that he’d let them get side-tracked from their game. At least they were in no hurry. He picked up the soap, an asymmetrical hunk of expensive stuff purchased by Rey. It smelled of creamy lemon and had little flecks of rosemary in it. 

“This looks like something you’d eat,” Hux said when Ren put it in his hands. 

“You may wash me with it,” Ren said, and he felt stupid for trying to pick up the game again, then very glad he had when Hux knelt down on the stone floor of the shower and looked up at him with the sweetest, most worshipful expression Ren had ever seen on anyone, the soap cupped in his hands like a sacred object Ren had bestowed upon him. Ren wanted to tug Hux up and kiss him for looking at him like that, almost couldn’t stand not to, but he stayed perfectly still, waiting to see what Hux would do.

“I’ll start with this,” Hux said, and he wrapped his fingers around Ren’s cock, gentle and reverent. “Since it’s just spent so much time in my dirty little arse.” 

Ren swallowed and nodded, his cock getting fat against Hux’s palm. “Yes,” he said, trying to maintain a regal bearing. “Go on. Get me clean.” 

Hux lathered his hands up and set the soap aside. He worked as if he was doing something non-sexual, scrubbing Ren with methodical seriousness as Ren’s cock filled out fully from the attention. Hux was hard, too, his untouched dick standing up pink and stiff between his spread legs. Ren wanted to gush praise at him, to say how almost unbearably cute he looked in this light and in this position. He kept his mouth shut, remaining in character and moaning with as much restraint as he could when Hux moved down to wash his balls. 

“God, you’re big,” Hux said. He squeezed Ren’s left thigh with his soapy hand and sighed. “You look even bigger from down here.” 

“My dick?”

“Yes, and, just.” Hux looked up at Ren, again with worshipful sweetness, though now it seemed less calculated. “All of you.” 

Hux washed Ren’s legs, less thoroughly than his dick but also with care, then stood and ran the soap over Ren’s stomach and chest, drawing soapy circles around his hard nipples. Ren said nothing, feeling as if he was observing something sacred and that talking would therefore be rude. His dick was throbbing. 

“What’s this one about?” Hux asked, pointing to the tattoo on Ren’s left shoulder. 

“It’s a tree,” Ren said.

“I can see that. Are these birds flying off of it?”

“Yeah. The tree is becoming the birds.” 

“Obviously. I meant-- What’s the meaning of it, for you?”

“Transformation. Obviously.”

Hux looked up at Ren and seemed to consider whether or not he should be annoyed by that remark. “So these are rather personal?” 

“Some of them.” Some were just cool-looking: skulls, flames, a skinny green dragon he’d seen on a woodblock painting. “Have you ever thought about getting one?”

Hux shook his head and continued to soap Ren’s shoulders. It felt good; he had clever hands. 

“Have thought about a piercing, though,” Hux said. “Two, actually.”

“Yeah?” Ren glanced down at Hux’s nipples. Hux was smirking when he looked up again. 

“Yes, those,” Hux said. “Good guess.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Frankly, I can’t afford it. I’ve been wanting to do something since the trial, though, some kind of-- Demarcation, like-- This is where my old self ends, here’s the new one. I’m not as creative as you, so nipple piercings were all I came up with. I did think about changing my name, but then, I don’t know. I couldn’t think of who else I’d be.” 

Ren couldn’t resist kissing him then. Hux allowed it, and gasped when Ren reached down to pinch his nipples. Ren grinned and pinched again, harder. Hux leaned into the feeling, his eyelids growing heavy. 

“They’re so perfect already,” Ren said. “I’d be a little sad if you pierced them.” 

“What’s perfect about them? They’re just-- ah, yes.”

“You really like that.” Ren hadn’t intended to tease him for it, except in the literal sense as he rolled Hux’s nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

“It’s your hands,” Hux said. He looked down at them, watching as Ren made his nipples as red as his face had gotten. 

“My hands?”

“They’re big, you’re-- You’re good at that.”

“At what? Touching you?”

Hux hummed noncommittally and closed his eyes. His head tipped back and he exhaled through his nose. Ren leaned in to lick the tender spots on Hux’s neck where he’d left marks the night before, one hand still working on Hux’s nipples while the other slid down to his ass. 

“Are you ready to be inspected?” Ren asked, murmuring this against Hux’s ear while he kneaded at his ass, dragging his thumb along the crack. 

“Yes,” Hux said. “You made such a mess of me with this.” Hux grasped Ren’s cock and squeezed, moaning when he felt how hard Ren was for him. 

“I did, didn’t I. Turn and face the wall. Hands on the stones, legs spread.”

Hux released Ren’s cock and stood there looking suddenly fretful. Before Ren could ask what was wrong, Hux turned and then he knew: of course. The scars. There they were, fully exposed, white lines criss-crossed at the center of Hux’s back, most of them high and thin. They looked very old but there was also something raw about them, maybe because they were wet. Ren wasn’t sure if he should tell Hux he could turn back around or if he should say anything at all. Hux put his hands on the wall and exhaled audibly. He widened his stance and looked back over his shoulder at Ren.

“Ready,” he said, softly. “Have a look.”

Surely he meant his ass. Ren wanted to kiss the scars, wanted to touch them while he held Hux against him. He wanted to memorize their texture by pressing his chest flush to them. He didn’t dare any of that. Instead he lowered to his knees and reached for Hux’s ass. Hux arched his back and spread his legs a bit wider when Ren pried his cheeks apart. 

“Hmm,” Ren said, dragging the pad of his thumb over Hux’s hole. “All pinked-up and come-crusted, just as I suspected.” 

Hux moaned and pressed his face to the wall. Ren felt a kind of lightening sense of relief moving through Hux’s body, spreading downward from his shoulders. Ren had seen the scars, and they had moved past it for now. Back to the matter at hand.

“I’ll need supplies,” Ren said, standing. “Wait here, don’t move.” 

“Supplies?” Hux said. 

“Nothing drastic,” Ren said, and he patted Hux’s hip before leaving the shower stall. He dripped water all over the bathroom floor as he squatted down to search the cabinets below the sink. He found the old bottle of Axe body wash that he’d been looking for, and a tube of moisturizing cream with aloe. A warlock needed potions. Rey’s box of disposable razor heads caught his eye, and he snatched one, closing it into his palm so Hux wouldn’t see it just yet. 

At the door of the shower he paused, admiring Hux in the steamy air as he peeked back at Ren uncertainly. Hux had taken Ren’s command to not move very literally. His posture again made Ren want to ask him if he’d been to military school, but that might ruin the mood. He tabled the question for later and shut the shower door behind him. 

“That poor, wrecked ass needs special healing potions,” Ren said, and he held up the Axe.

Hux snorted but didn’t protest. Likely he could guess that Ren just didn’t want to use the bar of communal soap for this purpose. Ren put the razor head in its little packet on the shelf near his conditioner, hiding it there for now. He’d always wanted to shave someone; he wasn’t even sure why. The weird intimacy of it appealed to him, but maybe it would be too much for Hux. He returned to Hux’s ass in the meantime, kneeling behind him again. 

“Your ass is hairless,” Ren said, these words falling out of his mouth before he could really consider them. “Do you wax?”

“No!” Hux shuddered at the thought. “It’s just like that.” 

“Oh.” Ren spread him open again and kissed his hole approvingly. “Lucky you.” 

“Jesus,” Hux said, muttering this against the wall. He was grinning. Ren could hear it. 

“Your accent is different when you say that.” 

Ren shouldn’t have mentioned it. Hux stiffened a little, his thigh twitching in Ren’s grip. For the first time, Ren wondered who Hux’s mother was. He knew everything he needed to about Hux’s father already. 

“Enough delay,” Ren said, popping open the top of the body wash. “Are you sore here?” He rubbed at Hux with his thumb, as if it wasn’t already obvious what he was asking about. 

“A little,” Hux said, voice small. 

“Mhm. I’ll proceed with caution, then.” 

Hux made soft noises while Ren cleaned him. For almost everything Hux did, these noises included, Ren continued to think: if I wasn’t already in love with him, this would have done it. That kept happening, and Ren had to stop himself twice from licking at Hux’s tender hole while he cleaned him, wanting very much to do so but not wanting the bitter taste of Axe on his tongue. 

“Now a little lotion,” he said when Hux was clean, though the water from the shower would just wash it off. This was more for dramatic than practical effect. Hux whimpered when Ren carefully rubbed some moisturizer around his puffy rim. “There,” Ren said, and then he did give Hux’s ass a kiss, on the soft inside part of his left cheek, just shy of making contact with his hole. “All better.” 

“I need to--” Hux said, and he turned to show Ren rather than saying it. He was so hard that Ren moaned sympathetically after one look at Hux’s straining cock. 

“Yes,” Ren said. He was going to grab Hux’s cock and pump him until he came to a swift release, but then he thought maybe he could make this even better. “But first, uh.” He looked down at Hux’s wet red hair, which was spreading onto his thighs, untamed. He’d been depressed and celibate, so of course he hadn’t tended to his pubes. “Allow me to prepare the altar?” Ren said, reaching for Rey’s razor. He held it up, eyebrows lifted, and waited for Hux to catch on. Hux was so overcome with the need to get off that it took him a moment.

“Oh,” he said. He glanced down at his dick and its environs. “You mean just, just that, right? Not anything weird?”

“What would be weird?”

“I don’t know, my leg hair? Underarms?”

“No, just these.” Ren ran his fingers through the hair around Hux’s cock, careful not to even brush the aching shaft with his wrist.

“Fine,” Hux said. “But just a trim, and be quick, please, I need--”

“I know, shhh. Trust me.” 

Ren popped Rey’s razor head off and replaced it with the fresh one. He’d throw this one out after shaving Hux with it, or maybe he’d keep it hidden somewhere. What if he and Hux were inventing all sorts of rituals right now, already? Next year they might be laughing about this together. _Within less than twenty-four hours of meeting me you were shaving my ball hair, how did I ever doubt we would stay together forever?_ Or something like that.

“Oh, god,” Hux said, breathing heavily as he watched Ren gently drawing the razor up over the inside of his thigh. “Careful.” 

“Don’t worry.” Ren pressed a tiny kiss to Hux’s cock, just ghosting his lips against the heat of it. Hux cursed under his breath. He was shaking. “Are you really okay with this?” Ren asked, looking up. 

“Please,” Hux said, nodding. “It’s-- I don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening. But it’s good. I like it.” 

Ren felt much the same. He concentrated on his work, feeling better about the effect of his efforts with the razor than he had about any artwork he’d made or even conceptualized of in months. Hux’s skin was so soft and pale. Even the little bits of red hair that washed away down the drain were dear to Ren. The light through the window and the fog of steam was perfect, like something an artist had carefully selected, and Ren wanted to say so but figured he’d already pushed Hux up against the boundaries of his weirdness. Though maybe not. He loved the idea that Hux might have gone to military school and might also be more game for weird shit than any of the deliberately eccentric art school assholes Ren had bedded. It made a kind of beautiful sense.

“There,” Ren said when he was done, the hair that remained neatened but not too neat. “You want to do me?” he asked, holding up the razor.

“Ren!” Hux said, teeth grit, and Ren’s heart swelled. Something about the way Hux said his name was so familiar already, as if they’d been together for years, centuries, eons, in every variation of any life they had suffered in separately until they found each other. As if they’d been stars together, even. Or space dust, or both.

He took Hux’s dick into his mouth with this in mind, and indeed it fit there as if it had been designed for him to suck. Hux made a sound that wanted to be loud but couldn’t be, and when Ren looked up at him he had both hands pressed over his mouth and was trembling so hard that he couldn’t seem to hump into Ren’s mouth the way he wanted to. He came with another muffled cry. Ren closed his eyes and swallowed it all down.

“Oh,” Hux said when Ren stood, supporting Hux’s weight when his knees seemed to want to give out. “Sorry, I-- Didn’t, ah. Warn you.” 

“You can come on me or in me without warning, it’s fine.” 

Ren meant it. Hux laughed and slumped into his arms. He took a few deep breaths before reaching for Ren’s cock, his head still resting heavily on Ren’s shoulder.  

“I can’t believe you just-- Shaved me,” Hux said, pronouncing _shaved_ as if it was a far dirtier word than _fucked_. “Whose razor was that?” he asked, wincing as if he knew.

“My cousin’s, but--”

“Ren!” 

Again, Hux said his name as if they were already in this together, for good and without doubt. 

“I changed the head,” Ren said, popping the one he’d used on Hux off. He replaced it with the original. “See?”

“Still.” Hux wrinkled his nose. “Maybe it’s because I’ve never lived with anyone. As an adult, anyway. I used to live with twenty disgusting teenagers at a time.” 

“Military school?”

“How did you know?” Hux rolled his eyes at himself when Ren beamed. “Well. Good guess. Do you want to come?”

“Yes, please.”

“Then I’ll teach you something about military school.” 

Ren’s eyebrows shot up. Hux grinned. He moved out of Ren’s arms and turned toward the wall again. 

“You can put it between my thighs,” Hux said, either feigning shyness or feeling authentically embarrassed by what he was suggesting. “But not in my arse. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ren said. His heart was going to fall wholesale out of his chest. His cock was so heavy he felt like it was going to maybe kill him when he came. He moved forward and slid it between Hux’s slender thighs when they parted for him, ready to die for this. 

“Use some conditioner for lube,” Hux said, squeezing around Ren and nearly finishing him off already. “Or I’ll chafe.” 

Ren reached for some blindly and squirted it into his palm. The angle was a little awkward, but he was close and it didn’t matter. The mere suggestion of what they were doing, and the implications about Hux’s past, had nearly blown the top of his head off. 

“Is that tight enough?” Hux asked when Ren fucked his thighs slowly, not wanting this to end.

“Yeah.” He had his hands on Hux’s hips, gripping him hard. Hux was making little sounds again, more deliberately now. These were just as effective as the ones that had escaped him without his permission: Ren was swelling between his legs, tightening all over and pressing his lips together, reminding himself just before he went over his edge that he couldn’t throw his head back and howl through his release the way he wanted to. He pretended they were in the showers at some grim institution, sneaking this moment away very carefully, and he buried what would have been a shout against Hux’s wet shoulder when he came.

“Fuck, that’s magnificent,” Hux said while Ren was still recovering. 

“Wha-- Yeah?”

“Yes, just, _unh_. That big cock pulsing between my thighs, it was-- Yes. Good.” 

“Are you hard again?” Ren asked, pawing at him. 

“I need a break,” Hux said, though he was, a little. He turned and pressed his back to the wall, hiding the scars. “Wash the rest of me, will you? And not with Axe, please.”

Ren took his time washing Hux’s front with the lemony soap, and when he washed Hux’s back he didn’t turn him around, just held him close, his hands moving with feigned indifference over the scars. Hux didn’t seem alarmed by being touched there now. He was soft in Ren’s arms, almost dozing with his head on Ren’s shoulder. 

“You said you’ve been everywhere,” Hux said. “Is that true?”

“Mhmm, yeah.” Ren didn’t want to get into it, but if Hux was going to be in his life, they would have to get into everything. 

“And you have the luxury of being an artist in his thirties,” Hux said, lifting his head. “So your family must have money.” 

Ren was a little offended, but he liked that Hux wasn’t sentimental. Ren could be sentimental enough for the both of them. 

“My mother,” Ren said, nodding. “My father’s a retired stock car driver, he doesn’t have shit. She pays him alimony.”

“Really, ha. It was the opposite, for me. Father had the money. My mother--” Hux shook his head. “Anyway, he cut me off completely before he died, so it’s neither here nor there, I suppose.”

“Fuck him,” Ren said. He could ask why, but it didn’t matter what that monster thought about anything. Good that he was dead. Ren wanted to kill him again. “Where’s your mom?”

“Gone, too, way before him. I’m an orphan. Another fun pity point I got to hammer on during the trial, because they wanted me to say that Snoke was like a parental figure to me, the cold kind whose approval you’re always drooling for if you’re a sad little orphan boy, and the really fucked up thing is that it was true. Never mind, I don’t know why I brought this up. Should we get out? I’d love to borrow a toothbrush, if you’ve got a spare.”

Ren didn’t have a spare toothbrush. He offered his own to Hux, and Hux accepted. While Hux brushed his teeth, a towel wrapped around his waist, Ren sat naked on the counter and brushed his fingertips over Hux’s shoulder and side intermittently, torn up by what he’d said but not wanting to make him say more. Hux didn’t like being pitied. That was clear. 

“I can get out of your hair now if you’ve got plans for the day,” Hux said after he’d rinsed his mouth out. He met Ren’s eyes in the mirror. 

“I was gonna work on my next show a little,” Ren said. “You could help, if you’re willing to look at what I have. I’d like your opinion, actually.” 

“Show?”

“Yeah. C’mere, I’ll lay it all out for you.” 

“All right.” Hux was trying not to look pleased, his pinked cheeks darkening to red. “But here, brush your teeth first.” 

“Ordering me around already,” Ren said. He grinned when Hux gave him a sharp look in the mirror. “It’s good. I’ve been needing some orders. What was military school like?”

“It wasn’t all sex in the showers, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was miserable, but I also liked it.”

“You did?”

“Yes, of course. I got to move out of my father’s house, that was joy enough. And I’m good at being ruthless, which was rewarded there. Or anyway I used to be.”

Ren stole glances at Hux while he brushed his teeth, trying to picture him as a ruthless teenager in military dress, shorn red hair peeking out from the back of his uniform cap, blushing cheeks betraying him on occasion. Teenage Ren would have been a human boner in his presence, unsuppressable, panting for him. 

There was no need to sneak through the hallway on the way back to Ren’s bedroom. Rey and Finn had already gone out. Part of the reason Rey had freely offered up their spare bedroom was her claim that she and Finn were rarely home at all, and it was true. They had lots of friends, enjoyed the outdoors during free time, and were at the restaurant almost nonstop beyond that. They loved their work and their co-workers and half the time stayed there until two or three in the morning, having dinner parties after everyone had finished their shifts. Ren envied them, but also wasn’t sure he wanted to be a person who didn’t retreat to his cave at every opportunity. It was too alien to comprehend, and now that he had found someone he wanted to secret away inside his cave forever, it seemed downright ideal. 

In Ren’s room, Hux put Ren’s t-shirt back on and Ren put on a fresh pair of underwear. They sat together in the center of the bed, Ren’s laptop resting on their thighs. Ren showed Hux selections from his life’s work to give him the proper context before introducing him to his not-actually-a-haunted-house concept. Hux was attentive but quiet, his chin on Ren’s shoulder and his hand wrapped around Ren’s bicep. 

“Can you play all of these instruments yourself?” Hux asked when Ren was describing the music for the piece, how it would vary from room to room and his considerations about how to achieve the right combination of sound bleed versus isolation. 

“Most of them,” Ren said. 

“I noticed--” Hux sat up and craned his neck. “Is that a banjo?”

“Yeah.”

“And what’s in that case?”

“Violin.”

“You can play the violin!” Hux looked impressed. 

“I’m not good,” Ren said, lifting one shoulder. “But that’s sort of the point.”

“The point?”

“In some of these pieces, like the video I showed you of the styrofoam balls exploding, the point is that I’m playing piano but it’s not, like, good piano. I’m not a musician. It’s part of the work, and the work is me, basically.”

“Right.” Hux looked again at the mess of Ren’s room. Ren had thought about cleaning it while Hux watched his videos, but couldn’t tear himself away from tracking Hux’s micro-reactions long enough to do so. “Play something for me?” Hux said.

“That’s not how it works.”

“I thought you wanted me to give you orders.” 

Ren gave Hux his gentle yet scary stare. Hux stared back with something similar, or maybe it was the inverse: slicing yet supportive.

“Fine,” Ren said. “Just don’t expect much.” 

He turned and surveyed the options. Some of his stuff was out in the living room or in storage. He kept most of his string instruments in here because their shapes comforted him. He’d considered mounting a few of the nicest ones on the wall, but his long history of tearing shit off of walls when he was angry made him too nervous to actually do it, though he had gotten a little better about suppressing that urge since hitting his mid-twenties. 

“What are you doing?” he asked when he heard Hux typing on the laptop.

“Looking up my life’s work,” Hux said. “You ought to see mine, too. It’s only fair.” 

“Is it text-based?” Ren asked, confused. 

“Mhmm, well, the lurid accounts of it in the news were, yes. That’s what I’m pulling up.”

“You could read it to me while I play.”

“Oh, why not,” Hux said, clicking links. “Might as well go full mad, I’m nine tenths of the way there already.” 

He looked up at Ren as if to judge his reaction to this statement. Ren wasn’t offended. He’d felt full mad since they left Hammerheads together. He was just more comfortable with the sensation. 

Ren picked up his mandolin. It wasn’t as mournful as the violin or as jocular as the banjo and seemed just right for the bittersweet account of Hux being almost sent to jail and ultimately freed because he’d allowed himself to be emotionally vivisected on the stand. Ren felt he should be naked for this performance, so he kicked off his briefs and stood at the window wearing only his tattoos. He started playing “King of Spain” and concentrated on getting the fingerings right, letting Hux pick his own cue to join in. 

He heard Hux take a deep breath. Not wanting to put pressure on him, Ren kept his gaze focused on the window, watching the cars in the parking lot three stories down. The window started at his waist, concealing the rest of his nakedness. 

“You’re actually good,” Hux said. “Liar.” 

“You don’t know much about music, do you?”

“Well, no, you snotty shit. I guess I don’t. Even so. Shall I, uh? Begin?”

“Whenever you want.” 

“With that music in the background it’ll sound like I’m making myself out like a folk hero.”

“Do that, then. I want to hear about you just like that.”

“Today the jury heard testimony from Armitage Hux,” Hux said, reading from the laptop, which was balanced on his knees. He’d pulled them up close to his chest in a kind of protective posture, but the more he read, the more he sounded unashamed and even kind of excited about the details of his own life and crimes. Ren loved it. His eyes blurred over, but he wasn’t going to actually cry. They must have looked at his old work for longer than he’d realized. It was nearing dusk outside, still bright but in that late afternoon way that felt fleeting, an unseen progress already beginning to coil the far end of the daylight away. 

“Oh, here’s a good bit,” Hux said, his legs stretched out in front of him now. “Young Mr. Hux has the public presence of a startled fox, and in the sense that this gives the impression he’s being hunted, he’s probably fortunate in this regard.” 

Hux looked up from the laptop. Ren finished “King of Spain” and intended to start a new song, but in the moment he couldn’t remember how to play anything. All he could do was look at the little fox in his bed with adoration, outplayed.  

“Come here,” Hux said, pushing the laptop away.

Ren went, thinking they might have sex. He was ready to offer up his ass, if Hux wanted it. But when he slid into Hux’s arms Hux just held him there. Ren wrapped himself around Hux accordingly, and they remained there in a weightless reverie while the sun sank lower in the sky outside. Hux stroked Ren’s hair. Ren licked and nipped at Hux’s jaw, where he had a little pudge of soft skin when he was lying on his side like this. Ren’s stomach eventually spoiled the moment by making a loud noise of hollow complaint.

“I’m starving, too,” Hux said in answer, rolling onto his back. “Either throw me out or bring me some more food.” 

“You must know you can stay as long as you want,” Ren said, sitting up on his elbow. “Don’t pretend otherwise.” 

“But that makes no sense, Ren.” 

Ren almost asked, have you never been in love before? He opened his mouth, even, but couldn’t force the words out. 

“I’m gonna order a pizza,” he said instead. “And I’ll make you a craft cocktail, if you want.” 

“A what?” Hux wrinkled his nose, but he was grinning. 

“Shut up. Rey’s teaching me. I was depressed last week so I decided to be a bartender.” 

“You shouldn’t be,” Hux said, and the amusement drained from his eyes. He was serious, holding Ren’s arm. “I like what you do. This other thing, this artwork. You should keep doing it.” 

People had told Ren this before: Rey, mostly. One gallery owner. A couple of guys he’d fucked. But it had never really reached him. He wasn’t able to know why until now. He’d been waiting for this specific confirmation that his life’s work was okay. He’d been waiting for Hux. 

“Rum or bourbon?” Ren asked, to combat the tightening of his throat. 

“Surprise me,” Hux said. “All I ask is that there’s no pepperoni on the pizza. Or green olives. Or ham.” 

Ren kissed Hux between his eyes and went to do his bidding, stepping back into his underwear on the way. This time he left his bedroom door open, since Rey and Finn would certainly be at work already. Periodically, as he stirred up their drinks and placed the pizza order, he glanced through the open doorway to make sure Hux was still there, that this was really happening. Every time he did this and saw Hux lounging on the bed, waiting for him, another piece of the long-missing thing within him seemed to slot into place. Every molecule of it felt familiar as it returned to him, whatever it was. On a pad near the kitchen phone he made some notes so that he could remember this feeling and build a project around it eventually.

_Heart puzzle (not literal). Tetris blocks? We are all made of exploded stars. Black holes have souls (don’t use that rhyme though). I swallowed you up when we were celestial objects. Or did you swallow me. Anyway, let’s devour each other again._

He shoved the notes into the waistband of his underwear, not proud of them. But maybe there was a useful fragment of thought in there somewhere. In the meantime he returned to Hux, ice clinking in their glasses, and resumed this more urgent project, possibly his real life’s work.

 

**


	3. Chapter 3

By nightfall Ren had given up on any attempt to manage his expectations. He’d never been good at keeping his hopes in check even in a casually optimistic situation, and the reverse was true when something went wrong, minor or major. He was prone to epiphanies about how everything could and should change for him at once.

This one felt different. The entire interlude with Hux was like the day his therapist had suggested his name change. Some barrier toward contentment had been lifted within him. He could see how it was possible to have what he needed, but there was still the long and tricky business of deserving it. That didn’t happen in an instant.

After a few craft cocktails and four slices of pizza he was having a hard time conjuring any real pessimism about his prospects, however. The candles were lit and Hux was soft against his side, tipsy and laughing at his stupid comments. Hux’s legs were tucked up against Ren’s chest as if he couldn’t get enough of himself onto Ren and had to fold himself in two for maximum contact. Ren was holding him as loosely as he could stand to, rubbing his thumb over a pale freckle near Hux’s right knee. They were kissing between bits of excited conversation, pawing at each other in a way that was both lazy with contentment and antsy with uncertain possessiveness, the ice from their second round of drinks melting in the glasses on Ren’s bedstand. 

“You could have me,” Ren said when they’d made each other hard again, Hux’s legs sliding down to clamp around Ren’s thigh. “I mean, fuck me. Since your ass is on hiatus.” 

“You don’t get to put my arse on hiatus. Maybe it’s raring to go.” 

“Mhmm, maybe, but. My point stands. You could.” 

“Do you like that?” Hux asked. He looked worried that Ren would say yes.

“Sure.” Ren shrugged. “Most guys assume I don’t want it. They think the tattoos mean I’m compensating for something. Like, trying to prove I’m tough. But I’m not like that.” He kept catching himself sounding drunk, and couldn’t remember the last time he had been. He usually didn’t like letting his control slip even a little, but taking dick had never felt that way. 

“I suppose I could,” Hux said, sighing. “If you really want me to. But maybe not just-- Yet.”

“You don’t have to ever, if you don’t like it.” Ren actually preferred having a partner watch him fuck himself with whatever he had on hand, if he was going to get fucked. It was like a performance. He felt powerful, doing that for an audience. 

“I thought I would love it,” Hux said. He sat up and rubbed at his face, glanced at the window. There was a streetlight glow, no moon visible from his angle. “When I was younger, I mean. I assumed I would always have to be on top, you know, I’m a control freak. A bit. But then I just felt-- Stupid, actually doing it? I felt like I had to keep saying things, like, ‘do you like that,’ or whatever. And it was almost like dancing. You know, when people watch you dance? And you feel like such an idiot? Sorry, I sound drunk. I’m not actually as drunk as I sound right now.” 

Ren sat up and kissed Hux very delicately between his eyes. He swept Hux’s hair back and tried to think of a nice way to say that he wanted to hear him drunkenly ramble all night. Sober rambling would be fine, too. Hux’s voice was incredible. Maybe Ren was also drunk.

“I like dancing,” Ren said.

Hux made a face. Ren laughed and kissed him again, now on the mouth. 

“I know what you mean, though,” Ren said. “You feel like you have to live up to someone’s expectation when you top. When you bottom, you’re just like. Show me what you’ve got.”

“Exactly!” Hux grabbed Ren’s shoulders and peered into his eyes with a kind of amazed appreciation. “That’s exactly it. But you like performing, don’t you? Showing, ah, what you’ve got?”

“Hell yeah.”

Hux grinned and Ren kissed him again. He wondered if it was possible to injure your lover with too much kissing. There might be a kind of chafing effect, after a while. But their lips were a little greasy from the pizza, and buzzing from the liquor, and it still just felt so good. 

“There is one way I like to be on top, so to speak,” Hux said when Ren pulled back. “I mean, I think I would. With you. I’ve never actually tried it. Or even thought of it, before--” 

Hux looked down at Ren’s chest. Ren was still only wearing his briefs. It took Ren a moment to figure out what Hux was looking at, exactly. 

“These?” Ren grabbed his pecs. “You want to fuck them?”

Hux groaned and chewed his lip. He looked up at Ren shyly, nodding. “Is that strange?”

“No stranger than me wanting to shave you.” 

“Have you done it before?”

Ren shook his head. “A guy asked to, once. But he called them my tits, which I don’t really-- I don’t care about that, but it was the way he said it. Like I was a piece of meat.” That guy hadn’t exactly listened to Ren play the mandolin before asking. They hadn’t talked about their difficult childhoods. They were in college, and the guy had been looking at Ren’s chest all night, also his arms, rarely his face. “I refused,” Ren said. “But in this case-- Yeah. Fuck yeah, let’s do it.” 

“Are you sure?” 

Hux had genuine concern in his eyes, and it was particularly obvious in his unguarded state of semi-inebriation. Ren kissed his nose and nodded. He leaned back onto his pillows and pushed his underwear down, freeing his cock. Hux stared at it, distracted from the plan by the sight. Ren didn’t mind. He gave it a few strokes for Hux’s enjoyment, getting himself fully hard. 

“I’m going to leave my shirt on,” Hux said, already straddling Ren’s chest. “I mean-- Your shirt.”

“It’s yours now, if you want. You can have it.” 

“Are you always this generous?”

“No.” Ren paused to consider if this was true or not as Hux scooched forward, his bare ass sliding over Ren’s abs as he timidly lined his cock up in the valley of Ren’s chest. “You have to squish them together,” Ren said, still not sure if he was normally generous or not. He couldn’t think about it right now, was too aroused by the sight of Hux wanting this from him and timidly taking it. “I think,” he added when Hux glanced up at him as if he needed to be told how, exactly, to press Ren’s tits in around his dick. “I’ll do it,” Ren volunteered, cheerfully-- generously --and he did. 

“Oh-- Yes,” Hux said, his eyes on his cock as he moved it gently through the narrow channel that Ren’s pushed-together chest provided. “Is that-- Does it feel okay? For you?”

“Yeah,” Ren said. He licked his lips. “Are you going to come on them?” 

“I don’t know, yes, if you, if that’s okay--”

“You could come in my mouth. Or on it.” 

“Nnh,” Hux said, and he let his eyes fall shut, his hips moving faster. Ren stared up at him in awe and watched him lose control, the jerky motion of his hips seeming to quake upward toward his shoulders. It was almost like a kind of dance, but Ren didn’t say so. He didn’t want Hux to feel self-conscious. 

“So you’ve never done this before?” Ren said. He tried to seem incredulous, as if to compliment Hux’s excellent form.  

“Never,” Hux said, breathless and heavy-lidded. He put his hand over his cock and groaned, pressing himself down harder against Ren’s slick skin. “Does it, is it-- Too much? Does it hurt?” 

“No.” It chafed a little, but Ren wanted to chafe under the pressure of Hux’s pleasure. He wanted Hux to fuck him hard, in this way if not the more traditional sense. “Want me to touch you?”

“Yes-- Please, please--”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Hux said, his voice breaking on the word like it hurt to admit how much he needed it.

Ren put his hands up under the shirt that billowed around Hux, squeezing his ass and petting his sides. The softer and more chaste he made his touches, the more Hux seemed to lose it, throwing his head back and humping himself against Ren’s chest with abandon. Hux rubbed his hand up over his own chest and then pushed it into his hair, squeezing and pulling. The slightest pressure against Ren’s cock would have made him come while he watched this, but he kept his hands up under the shirt, squeezed over Hux’s ribs and tracking his panted breath. 

“You like that?” Ren asked. “Having your hair pulled?”

Hux looked clueless when he snapped his head forward to meet Ren’s eyes. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. 

“Yes,” Hux said, breathing this out with wonder, as if Ren was psychic and not just watching him do it. “I do, ah, I like it--” 

“Lean over,” Ren said. “I’ll do it.” 

Hux stilled for a moment and bent down so Ren could reach his hair. Their eyes locked, and Hux seemed to search Ren’s for some kind of permission. He closed them when Ren grabbed the back of his hair with one hand, his other hand still snug on Hux’s waist. 

“Fuck me,” Ren said. “Go on. And tell me if I pull too hard.” 

“Just--” Hux said. He shook his head and whimpered, curled over Ren and shaking. His eyes were closed and his whole body seemed unsteady, but in a beautiful way, like he was close to breaking free of some orbit that had held him too long. He fucked himself against Ren’s chest and moaned when Ren tugged on his hair, just hard enough to pull his head back and expose his throat. 

“Look at you,” Ren said. “So bad, rubbing yourself all over me.” 

“I am, I am bad,” Hux said, not needing to be told to play along. He tried to nod, eyelids fluttering. Ren held him steady, mostly. 

“Gonna spill yourself all over me? That sticky mess, you want to see it splattered on me, don’t you?”

Hux just groaned. Ren wished he had two more hands, so he could push his pecs in around Hux’s dick again while still holding his waist, his hair. 

“Come on me,” Ren said, just to see if it would work. 

“I--” Hux said, bucking against him. He wanted to, Ren could see it. His eyes were pinched shut as if in concentration. 

“Do it,” Ren said, and he gave Hux’s hair a tug after issuing this command. 

Hux shouted and came with surprising strength, considering how much he’d spilled over the past hours. Ren let go of Hux’s hair and watched him shaking through it until he collapsed, damp with sweat under the t-shirt. Ren held him, not even bothering to clean the come off his throat. It felt like a kind of compliment, anyway. He’d pushed the right button. 

“Did I pull too hard?” Ren asked, petting the back of Hux’s head. 

Hux answered by surging up to kiss him on the mouth. He seemed particularly shaken by this orgasm. Ren had lost count of how many each of them had had since arriving here, and this one was different from the others somehow, maybe because Hux had asked for this thing he wasn’t sure he should be allowed to have and Ren had given it, hair-pulling and all. Ren’s dick was throbbing, but he could ignore it for now. Something corresponding in his ego felt very sated already, humming with victory. 

“Want my mouth?” Hux asked, mumbling this against Ren’s lips. He seemed tired, like he needed another nap. 

“Would you be into just watching me?” Ren asked. 

Hux was into it, and he was wide awake again by the time he’d watched Ren jerk himself off with two fingers up his ass. Hux crawled onto Ren as he was coming down from it and rolled him into his arms while they kissed. There was something protective about it, and sweet, like Hux wanted to reassure Ren that this demonstration of vulnerability hadn’t been wasted on him. As if Ren didn’t know that already. 

Hux’s arms loosened around him as he drifted into a post-sex doze. Ren felt jittery with energy, also thirsty. He left Hux in the bed and went to clean up in the bathroom. There was a red mark over his sternum, but it wasn’t raw, just worked over. He rubbed some of the moisturizing cream onto it, from the same tube that he’d used on Hux in the shower. 

When he returned to the room Hux was awake in the candlelight, curled up on his side. His posture seemed to indicate that there was a missing element in this scenario and that it was Ren, as if Hux had already grown accustomed to curving around the warm spot Ren made on the bed. Or maybe Ren was over-romanticizing Hux’s random slump. He handed Hux the glass of water he’d brought from the kitchen and watched him gulp from it. 

“Your phone rang,” Hux said after he’d finished half the glass. 

“Shit,” Ren said. Anyone he actually wanted to communicate with would send a text. Only two people called instead. He glanced at his phone, which was on the bedstand by the melted remains of their drinks. The screen was still lit up from the missed call. 

“Want me to look?” Hux asked when Ren just stood in the middle of the room, staring at his phone as the screen went dark again. 

“No,” Ren said. “I can handle it.” 

“Expecting some bad news?”

“Not exactly.” 

Ren picked up the phone. The missed call was from Han, and he had a new voicemail. He considered leaving the room in order to listen to it, then wasn’t sure why he would. Hux was looking up at him from the bed with sympathy, as if he knew enough already to guess why Ren was irritated. 

“Hey, kid,” Han’s message began. His tone was of the _I want something_ variety. “I’m on the east coast for business, need to use the truck. Which is my truck, anyway, so I’m just giving you a heads up here. I’ll be around tomorrow, or maybe Monday. What’s-- Shit, today’s Monday. So I mean Wednesday, or it could be Tuesday. Just have the truck available, okay? And not with a bunch of shit in the bed, I need that clear. All right, thanks. We should have a drink together while I’m here, uh. I’ll be in touch.” 

Ren deleted the message after listening to it. As far as messages from his parents went, it was mild. It was true that the truck technically belonged to Han. _You have all that money_ , Han was fond of saying. _And you can’t buy your own place? Not even your own car?_

And then, always, if she was present: _leave him alone_ , from Leia. Because she knew why the money sat there like a lump in Ren’s throat. He had spent a lot of it, years ago, on traveling around alone. Blowing it on something transitory like wandering the earth in a daze had seemed appropriate. He didn’t know how to handle it otherwise.

“Everything okay?” Hux asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed. His hair was all messed up from Ren’s tugging on it and from their general rolling around together. 

“Yeah,” Ren said. “It’s just my dad. He’s in town, I guess. For business.” 

“What does he do?” 

“All sorts of things.” Ren stretched out on the bed beside Hux, on his back. “He always has some scheme. Usually the legality is questionable.”

“My father was the same way,” Hux said. He leaned down onto his elbow, unfolding himself alongside Ren but not touching him. Even this felt especially intimate, that they could just be beside each other this way. “He was very good at finding loopholes and exploiting them. Well, he exploited everything. That was his philosophy. If you can get your hands around it, use it.” 

Ren put his hand over Hux’s on the sheets. Hux’s gaze shifted away. 

“My dad wanted me to be a certain way,” Ren said. “And I wasn’t.”

“You were smarter than me, then. I did everything I could to be exactly what my father wanted. And I was very good at meeting expectations. Obedient, successful in school. I was a bully, too, like him. Like he’d taught me, because that was strength to him. He still--” 

Hux met Ren’s eyes and shrugged his shoulders in a defensive little jerk, like he was angry at Ren for looking at him. 

“Well,” he said. “You saw.”

“Yes.” 

“He used his belt.” Hux slid his hand out from beneath Ren’s and rolled onto his back as if to hide the scars, though he was still wearing Ren’s shirt.

“Fuck,” Ren said. He felt like an idiot for saying anything, but Hux was staring at the ceiling like he hadn’t heard or didn’t care.

“I took that as an insult,” Hux said. “I would think, he uses the belt because he doesn't even want to touch me to hit me. That’s how low I am, to him. That’s how I was thinking, already, when I was four years old, five. I didn’t say this on the stand.” Hux turned toward Ren, eyes flashing, like Ren had accused him of doing so. “Not that part, I mean.” 

“Your mother?” Ren said, not daring to clarify the question. His heart was slamming, and he wanted to roll out of bed and punch the wall. That would be the worst thing to do, so of course that was his instinct.

“She had died,” Hux said. He was looking at the ceiling again, hands folded over his belly. “Which was how I ended up with him. He was worried I was soft, because I was traumatized by her dying and was behaving like a traumatized child, and that wouldn’t do. His father had beaten him into the man he became, or so he thought. He seemed confused that he wasn’t getting any satisfaction out of it the way his father had, but I suppose he did get results.” 

Hux exhaled as if exhausted and closed his eyes. Ren rolled onto him and waited to be pushed away. Hux turned into his touch instead, tugging him closer. There was nothing that could be said in answer to any of this. At least not to Hux, who hated pity. Ren hoped Hux would feel him trembling with suppressed rage and take from that whatever he needed. 

“My mother was lovely,” Hux said, his voice muffled against Ren’s shoulder. “My hero. And some people don’t even get that.” He lifted his face and peered at Ren, blinked. “What’s your mother like?” 

“Stubborn. Stern, smart. Really strong, in a way that I’m not.” 

“How’s that? You seem strong to me.” 

“I don’t know. I take everything personally. She takes nothing personally. It’s a skill she has. She could never manage to teach it to me.” 

Hux squinted and seemed to consider the comment. Their faces were very close, in a way that made Ren feel like they were hiding together from what they were saying. He liked the feeling, and hoped that Hux did, too. 

“I might be the same kind of person,” Hux said. “I was trying to be, before everything crumbled at the company. I think people would have described me that way, as someone who wasn’t affected by anything on a personal level.” 

“But you were.” Ren knew that his mother was, too. He knew his suicide attempt had hurt her, and some things he’d said shortly before that. Some things he’d said since, too. “Right?”

“I suppose, yes. But I was good at holding it all at arm’s length. I could detach from the parts of myself I didn’t want to deal with. My father did teach me how to do that.” 

“I hope he died painfully,” Ren said, unable to resist. 

Hux sniffed. Ren felt it on his nose, a warm little puff. 

“I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t spoken to him in ten years when I got the news from one of his ex-wives. He essentially disowned me when I was seventeen. I had to sell my mother’s ring to pay for my last semester at school.” 

“Jesus. What, I mean. Did something happen?”

Hux tucked himself even closer to Ren. His eyelashes brushed Ren’s cheek.

“He had friends at my school. He had taught there himself before I attended. Word got around about me and this junior instructor. A man. The ironic part was that I wasn’t even having sex with that man, just some other men, a classmate and also a townie. But when my father confronted me about the rumor he saw it in my eyes. That I was guilty in the way that mattered. And that was that. Actually I think he already knew I liked men and didn’t give too much of a shit, I think he was probably pleased in some way to have been right about me all along, but I’d embarrassed him by letting word get round to his friends. Sorry, I feel like I’m talking in my sleep. Should we have a nightcap?” 

Ren kissed Hux’s face twice, softly. It seemed important to him to be able to gush realities without being forced to dissect them. Ren could appreciate that. 

“You’re amazing,” Ren said, avoiding the impulse to say something more like, _how could anyone ever hurt you, how are you holding yourself up under the weight of this_. “That you went through all that and had no help.” 

“Snoke helped me,” Hux said. He sat up, a dark look coming over him. “Almost helped me into a jail cell. I told you, I testified that he was like a father figure. He knew I was gay, he was fine with it. He made a point of being fine with it, looking back. He hand-picked me and played me so well, sometimes I’m still waiting for him to pull it off and trade places with me. God, I really hate him, Ren. I hate him more than I ever hated Brendol.” 

“Brendol?”

“Oh, my father. That was his name. It’s an odd one, I know. Like mine.” 

“And mine. My dad’s name is Han.” Ren waited for Hux to ask if he was talking about Han Solo, the famous driver, but only old people ever did. 

“What’s he like?” Hux asked. “Beyond the shady business dealings.” 

“Charming. People love him. Until he swindles them and makes excuses and disappears. But it’s weird, because it’s not malicious. Which makes it more infuriating. Do you want to come with me?”

“With you? Where?”

“To the kitchen. To get a nightcap.” 

It seemed wrong to be apart just then. He grinned when Hux accepted his hand and slid out of bed with him. 

Hux made the drinks this time. Strong, Ren noticed. They toasted without speaking and held each other’s gaze for a long moment, both searching the other’s eyes for something. When Ren drank he realized they’d both been trying to judge if the other was okay: with what had been said, with a third drink, plus whatever came next. 

“Have you been back to the UK?” Ren asked after two deep swallows. “Since college?” 

“No, actually. All the travel I did while working for Snoke was in Asia. I never had time to travel for pleasure. I’d like to go back to Ireland, at least. Of course, now there’s no money for it.” 

Ren almost said: we could go together. We could go right now. He wondered if Hux’s mother was buried there. Maybe he’d only told himself there was no time for personal travel, back when he could have afforded it. 

“Where in Asia?” Ren asked. 

“Hong Kong, Singapore. Tokyo, just once. I mostly saw the insides of hotel rooms and conference rooms. I didn’t have anyone to venture out with after the work was done, and I was timid about going alone. That’s pathetic, isn’t it.” 

“No.” 

“I’m sure you went everywhere alone. When you went everywhere.” 

“Yeah. But I didn’t feel like it was some brave thing I was doing. It felt more like a cowardly thing, like running away.”

“When was this? What were you running from?”

Ren wanted to explain, just not while they stood half naked in the kitchen. Or mostly naked, in his case. He threw back the rest of his drink. Hux did the same. 

“I’m gonna put on some music,” Ren said. “In my room. And there’s pictures, if you want. Of my travels.” 

“Oh, so another personal show for me?” 

“Yes.” 

The rest of my life could be a personal show for you, Ren almost said. But he wasn’t quite that drunk.

Back in Ren’s room, he shut the door and consulted his laptop. He’d networked it to some wireless speakers that were strategically mounted, just for his own purposes. He never thought he’d have a guy here, or that he’d care about impressing anybody with his taste in music. His hero was the owner of Hammerheads, who gave no shits about what people thought of his Phil Collins tracks, and Hux didn’t seem like he was into music anyway. But the next song they listened to together had to be perfect, because the one he’d played for Hux had felt just right. It was already canonized in Ren’s mind as a stepping stone on the path of omens they’d been treading along, toward some ultimate truth that meant they had always been walking in parallel lines toward the same place. 

He put on a recording of “En Aranjuez con tu amor” that featured a flugelhorn solo he’d been obsessed with since high school, hoping that Hux would appreciate it, or at least not dislike it. He hesitated over whether to put the song on repeat or allow his playlist to shuffle. The latter option was terrifying, but the potential for embarrassment also seemed appropriate, so he went with it and joined Hux on the bed. 

“So I had a good time in undergrad,” Ren said, dragging his laptop over after Hux had settled against his side. “But grad school was different. Something about it made me feel like a faker. Not just because my program was more rigorous. People were different. They all seemed out to get me. I felt like they were sniffing around to figure out my fatal flaw so they could jump on it and attack.” 

“Ah, yes,” Hux said. “That’s how I felt for most of my career in finance. Not to mention military school.” 

Ren kissed Hux’s forehead and opened the laptop. “So I dropped out,” he said. “I had money that my grandfather had left me.” He wouldn’t call it a trust fund just yet. “I hadn’t touched it except to pay for school, it felt like it wasn’t allowed. And spending it felt-- Weird. Like, dangerous. But also like a tribute. It was a fucked-up period in my life. Second most fucked-up of all time, I guess.” 

“Where did you go first?” Hux asked. 

“New Zealand. I wanted to start big.”

“Isn’t New Zealand sort of small? In terms of landmass?”

“Yeah, but the flight. The flight was long as fuck.” 

Hux craned his neck as Ren paged through thumbnails. Not much in his life was extremely organized, but his photography was. He opened a few pictures from his first month of traveling and let Hux select another. In the one Hux picked Ren was on an outdoor patio at a bar, hunched over a drink, trying to look smouldering. 

“Who took this?” Hux asked. 

“Don’t remember,” Ren said, though he did. It was taken by a guy he’d slept with later that night, a fellow solo traveler who was just finishing up his own world tour. He’d also been a fellow trust fund kid and arrogant asshole. 

“You had fewer tattoos,” Hux said. 

“Got a lot of them while traveling.” 

Hux rested his cheek on Ren’s shoulder and made mild noises of acknowledgement as each photo was opened. He only smiled at the pictures of Ren looking ridiculous. 

“You seem so intense in these,” Hux said. “Is that intentional?” 

Ren elbowed him. “A little.” 

“Did you feel hunted? What were you running from?”

The music had changed to a less ideal track, an old 4 Non Blondes song that Ren used to perform at karaoke bars with Rey as a sort of inside joke. They had once crashed a bachelorette party at a dive bar and won many friends among the revelers after a dramatic performance of this song. Jello shots were passed around. Ren brought Rey home safe and sound and merry but still got chewed out by his mother the next day, via Luke, for letting her drink. Rey had been nineteen, and Ren argued that a legal drinking age above eighteen was pure bullshit, probably even unconstitutional. Leia was not swayed. 

“I spent a ton of my grandfather’s money on this trip around the world,” Ren said, still scrolling through photos while Hux watched. “It was so fucking wrong to burn through it like that. Almost like, evil. Especially since I wanted to make the kind of art that I knew wouldn’t be commercially successful. But I felt like I had to sacrifice the money or something. Like I was lighting it on fire. I got myself in bad situations. I fucked-- So many people, tried every drug I was offered. It felt like I was undoing all the work I’d done when I was younger, burning myself to the ground, but I was more afraid to stop than to keep going. I don’t know. It was like I was trying to commune with my grandfather through self destruction. Running from his ghost, basically, but also trying to become the ghost.” 

Ren waited to hear that he was a spoiled shit for ever having the ability to make this mistake and for now acting like he even had the right to regret it. He’d heard it before. He didn’t disagree.

“You were close to your grandfather?” Hux said. “When he was alive?”

“No. Not at all, he wasn’t close to anyone by the time I was born. But I wanted to be. I craved his attention, I had this fixation. It was something about how he was connected to me but also completely remote. I felt like I had to take some kind of action or just like, decipher the significance of this person to myself. I wanted to understand him. How he could have hurt my grandmother the way he did. I knew he regretted it. But then he just lived out the rest of his life as shitheel anyway.” 

“And he left his money to you, specifically?” 

“Yeah. That got to me. Why me? Was I like him? Did he want to pass on some-- Curse? Getting famous had ruined his life, and that’s where all the money was from. I don’t know if he even liked me. Maybe he did. He fucking hated my dad, like. Hated him. He tried to have him killed once, according to Han. But I don’t know if that’s true. But it might be.” 

“Damn,” Hux said. There was something vaguely admiring in his tone. 

“I’d only met him a few times,” Ren said. “He was always at least a little drunk. But he still had this presence, you know, he loomed gloriously. That’s not me just saying that, that was written about him in _Vanity Fair_. Even after all the shit went down, they printed that. Anakin Skywalker loomed gloriously at the after-party.”

“After-party?” Hux said.

“I don’t know, some awards show thing. People wanted to help him. I did, anyway. And Luke did, too, and that was another thing I didn’t want to have in common with Luke when I was little. Fuck, I can’t-- I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m still obsessing about this.” 

He felt especially stupid about it in light of Hux’s actual tragic history. The few friends he’d ever spoken to about Anakin to had nothing in their collection of family horror stories that compared with the inherited disgrace Anakin represented for the Skywalker family. They were all obsessed with their parents’ divorces. Ren was, too, admittedly.

Hux shifted against him. “I know about ghosts,” he said. “How they preside over your life. Even the good ones. Maybe especially them.” 

“I always want to ask my grandmother about him,” Ren said, not sure how else to ease into the subject of Hux’s mother without asking outright. “But it’s painful for her, so I don’t.” 

“Mhm.” Hux stiffened. He seemed to know what Ren was up to. Ren knew better than to try to be subtle when he was drinking, or ever. He could never pull it off. 

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Ren said. 

“What?”

“Your mother. Never mind. Hang on, I hate this song, let me change it.” 

But nothing else in the random shuffle sounded right either. Ren began to panic. Hux was sitting behind him on the bed as if waiting for something, silent. It occurred to Ren again that his certainty that this was a solid thing that he could hold on to might be nothing more than a sex-drunk delusion. One wrong move could still snap Hux awake and get him calling for an Uber, muttering about how maybe he would see Ren again at Hammerheads sometime. Whatever happened next, Ren was absolutely sure that Hux would never return to Hammerheads, with or without him. 

He gave up and settled on a lame instrumental synth-pop thing that he didn’t even remember downloading. It was unobtrusive, at least. He pushed his laptop aside and turned back to Hux. 

“Am I part of some project you’re doing?” Hux asked. 

“What?” 

Hux flopped back onto the pillows. It seemed like an intentional attempt at appearing casual, actually a defensive maneuver. 

“Are you going to write about this?” Hux asked. “About the sex marathon you had with a tragic stranger?” 

“Why would you ask that?” 

Ren was frozen, horrified. It had happened while his back was turned. The spell had broken. Hux’s eyes were hard. He was looking at Ren like he’d caught on to his scheme. Now the bland music seemed not only totally wrong but part of the problem, like a condemnation. 

“Because you make art about your life,” Hux said. “You told me so yourself. And because you’re too good to be true.” 

“I’m not. I’m still a fuck-up. Can’t you see that?” Ren looked around the room, at the mess. “I live with my cousin. She’s seven years younger than me.” 

“So what?” Hux sat up. He looked angry, which was an improvement. “I live in a motel that I’m about to be evicted from. I’ve got one hundred and forty-nine dollars left to my name. I haven’t got a fucking cousin, I haven’t got anyone. You, you’re-- _Glowing_ , you’re like a cornucopia of everything I wanted even before I needed it as much as I do now, which is desperately. Don’t pretend you can’t see your own glow.” 

Ren had no time to consider his next move. He just made it, crawling toward Hux and straddling him, pinning him to the bed by his shoulders. Hux went willingly but didn’t seem swayed. He was still snarling, breathing through his nose, his lips pressed together as if to warn Ren off of trying to solve this with a kiss. 

“Don’t pretend,” Ren said. “Fine. You either. Don’t pretend you can’t feel it.” 

“I’m feeling a great deal of things, yes, but I’m not like you. I can’t hang my hopes on a feeling. Last time I tried that I was almost framed for someone’s RICO violations.” 

“What do you need from me? What the hell can I do to make you believe I’m just as fucking real and needy and desperate as you?” 

Hux wrinkled his nose at the question. “Well. I’d probably need you to also be dead broke, but I’ll admit I’m glad you’re not. Or are you?”

“I still have some money. I don’t really use it, but. I could be persuaded.” 

Hux groaned. There was something joyous in it, but more disbelief than anything. “You’re out of your mind!” he said. “You don’t even know me. And I don’t want your money.” 

“Listen.” Ren hoped a better song would come on. It was like this one would never end. “I’ve been thinking, even before tonight. Or-- Before we met at Hammerheads, I mean. My mom’s been on my case about living with Rey and Finn, since they just got married. She’s right, as usual. I should get my own place.” 

“Oh my god.” Hux closed his eyes. “What is happening.” 

“And I’d want a roommate. Someone I really like. You’re the only person I currently like at all, other than Rey and Finn.” 

“You’re completely mad.” 

“Why? Because you’re going to kill me in my sleep if we’re roommates? Rob me, burn down the house?”

“Because I haven’t got any money to pay you rent! And I’m not going to become a bloody rent boy for the first man I’ve really liked since coming to this fucking country!” 

Hux grunted and pushed Ren off of him. He sat up, pulled his knees to his chest and hugged his arms around them, folding in on himself. The song ended, finally. Ren held his breath, waiting to see what would play next. 

“That would spoil it,” Hux muttered. “You supporting me. Don’t you see? I want to be equals, and we’re not. So of course this gets ruined, too, by what Snoke did to me. Fuck it, no, I did this to myself. I was complicit. I knew we were cheating, stealing. This is my punishment, the rest of my life.” 

From the speakers, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” started playing. Ren wasn’t sure how this could be classified as a good omen, but something about it cheered him. He sat up and moved closer to Hux, cautiously. 

“You could get a job,” Ren said. “I could help you.” 

“Right, and what would I be doing? Peeling potatoes at your cousin’s restaurant?”

“Maybe.” Ren shrugged when Hux cut him a look. “Wouldn’t that be a better penance than being alone? You could work in a kitchen, okay, it wouldn’t be great. But if that’s what you’d need to do, so you’d feel okay about rooming with me, maybe it would be worth it. I could try to make it worth it. I’d really try hard, Hux.” 

“And what would you be doing?” Hux’s expression had softened. He seemed to like hearing Ren say his name. “Making art at home while I’m slaving away over dirty dishes?”

Ren considered how to respond to this. He would be fine with Hux not working, but understood his objection. Ren didn’t want to work in a kitchen either, but he needed to at least be busy if not inspired, straining toward something. When he wasn’t, he felt like he was nothing.

“What was your major in college?” Ren asked. 

“International business.” Hux wilted as if it pained him to admit this. “I also have an MS in Finance.” 

“Interesting.” 

“Yes, I’m sure that combined with my stellar resume will get me far.” 

“What if your employer didn’t care about your past?” 

Hux snorted. “Find me one who wants to work with Otto Snoke’s hapless protege.” 

Ren raised his hand. He felt stupid and lowered it. Hux was frowning. 

“I just told you,” Hux said. “I’m not going to be anyone’s rent boy. Even if he’s--”

Hux cut himself short and scoffed. Ren allowed himself to wonder if Hux might have been about to say _even if he’s the love of my life_. Probably it would have been something more like, _even if he’s giving me the best fucks of my life_.

“I wouldn’t be paying you for your affection,” Ren said. “I need an agent. Rey’s been saying that for years. Even Leia-- My mother. She says so, too.” 

Hux opened his mouth, but whatever argument he’d been thinking of making seemed to die on his tongue. He frowned again, differently now, and looked away from Ren. For a moment Ren was terrified that Hux was going to say he knew Ren’s mother.

“What would you require of an agent?” Hux asked. “I don’t know much about the avant garde art scene. Or any art scene.” 

“I could teach you,” Ren said. Something like a crescendo started building in his chest at the thought of it, and suddenly he couldn’t imagine anything he would ever want to do more than giving Hux a tour of the art world as he knew it, watching Hux scoff at all of it while taking notes. “I really just need someone to handle the practical side of things. I’m fucking horrible at it, I have no patience for it. I always undersell because I hate negotiating.” 

Hux’s eyebrows went up. 

“I love negotiating,” he said, softly. He seemed dazed but cautious, like he was struggling to accept the reality of something that had just appeared before his eyes. 

“Plus just promotional stuff,” Ren said. “That whole business side of it. I’m too romantic about it, I want to succeed purely on word of mouth, but then I see shitty former classmates getting rich off their subpar crap just because they’re good at making connections and like, following up.” 

“I’m good at those things.” Hux groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. “What, so. You would pay me a salary? That’s still obscene.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I want to be-- ah! With you. Not employed by you. Oh, fuck, I should sleep, I feel painfully sober and totally out of control. I’m wired, I’m exhausted. What is this, even?”

Destiny, Ren thought. Hux recoiled slightly, as if Ren had said it out loud. Ren didn’t take it personally. It wasn’t him Hux was afraid of. 

“Could we have sex?” Hux asked, almost whispering, as if they were hiding under bleachers. “I think I need that, if you’re. If you’re up for another go.”

Ren was up for it. He didn’t even protest on behalf of Hux’s ass when Hux climbed into his lap and lifted up onto his knees to prep himself. Hux kept his eyes on Ren’s while he dragged two slick fingers in and out of himself, making soft noises when he brushed some particularly tender or otherwise sensitive spot, his other hand braced on Ren’s shoulder. When he was ready he wiped his fingers on the hem of Ren’s shirt, then pulled it off. He threw it onto the floor and began to lower himself, groping for Ren’s dick. Ren was very hard, had taken a squirt of lube and stroked it onto himself idly while watching Hux. He’d been fighting off tears the whole time, though he wasn’t upset. He was just bursting with something, trying to contain it. Maybe it was a kind of glow, but it wasn’t anything he could take credit for. Hux had brought it out of him. 

“You look like you’re going to cry,” Hux said, whispering this against Ren’s lips. He brushed his thumbs over Ren’s cheeks as if to sweep away the tears that weren’t there. 

“I’m not,” Ren said. “Just--” 

He closed his eyes as Hux descended onto him, taking him in slowly. Hux was careful with himself, gasping and pausing on his way down. Ren held him by the waist just lightly, letting him dictate the pace. 

“I’m not usually like this,” Hux said. He pressed his cheek against Ren’s as he came close to a full seat. He was trembling, squeezing Ren’s shoulders. 

Ren licked Hux’s cheek. “Like what?” 

“Ah, just, _hnn_ , insatiable. But then again I’ve never felt, _fuh_ \-- So sated. By this.”

Hux moaned and pressed himself all the way down onto Ren after saying so, rolling his hips to try to get Ren even deeper. Ren whimpered and dug his teeth into his bottom lip. He’d been close since watching Hux prep himself. He exhaled when a hasty orgasm had been successfully avoided, wrapped his arms around Hux and buried his face against Hux’s shoulder. He imagined Hux’s skin had started to smell like his bed, his shirt, his own sweat. Just a little. They had been together for days, which by some measurements was a short time: to have known each other, to have fallen in love. On the other hand, most first dates didn’t last this long.

“I’m close,” Ren said when Hux bounced shallowly and almost made him come, again. “Sorry.”

“Shhh,” Hux said, and he licked Ren’s right ear: not just politely like some guys did, as if to acknowledge that they’d noticed it and that it was fine, like they forgave his ears for being so noticeable during sex, when Ren’s hair traitorously revealed them. Hux licked Ren’s ear from the lobe to the tip and left it wet. Then he did it again

Ren had to chew his lip again, this time to keep from laughing. What the fuck was Hux doing to his ear. He realized after about five more licks that Hux was trying to help him last, distracting him from the fever point of his pleasure by doing this weird ear shit that was also distractingly emotional, because it felt like a demonstration of true affection. It worked: Ren lasted until Hux started bouncing on him with wild abandon, head thrown back. 

When they were finished they cleaned up with a handful of tissues from the box on Ren’s desk, both unwilling to move any further from the bed. It was late, but not late enough for Rey and Finn to be back yet. Ren blew out the candles. 

“You want anything?” he asked, already climbing back into the bed, already spooning himself up behind Hux.

Hux laughed in a little sniff. The back of his hand was pressed over his mouth, and there was something sad and mean about that laugh, as if it was for Hux alone and Ren couldn’t partake. Ren hugged Hux closer. He was tired and disoriented and finally starting to hope they could just be together and not talk for a while. 

“Anything like what,” Hux said, mumbling this against his hand. 

“Like some water.” 

“Oh.” Hux pressed himself back against Ren more snugly. He had this way of apologizing without words but with his whole body. Ren loved that; he loved everything. “No, thank you. I’ll just rest for a while.” 

“Me too.” Ren slid his arm under Hux’s neck and wrapped himself around Hux more completely. “Want me to get off of you?” 

“No, stay on me.” 

“Okay.” 

“Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

They both laughed, or started to, but it became a kind of defeated sighing moan because they didn’t even really have the energy to laugh. Ren was more tired than he’d ever been in his life, so spent that he felt like his bones were trembling from overexertion. He could feel how drained Hux was, too. The curve of his spine seemed to say so to Ren’s chest. 

Ren dreamed about Hux. The dreams were terrifying and comforting at the same time, in a way he couldn’t explain to himself when he woke with a jerk and buried his face against Hux’s neck again, shaken every time. He dreamed that they were rival warlords who killed each other, that they were military school allies who betrayed each other, that Hux stole a priceless artifact from Ren’s family’s kingdom. In that dream Ren hunted Hux down and stood over him at his outlaw camp in the woods, hesitating to execute Hux because of the way he was grinning, which was like a smug bastard who knew something Ren didn’t, and also because of the way the light through the tree canopy made his pale green eyes seem to glitter. Then Ren executed him anyway. And then regretted it. He woke from that dream sweating. Hux didn’t protest when Ren rolled him over and kissed his face. It was like Hux knew, Ren thought, still reeling and half asleep. Like he’d been there, too, because of course he had. It was like Ren was forgiven at last. 

He dreamed that met on a grassy plain between two woodlands during wartime and aimed weapons at each other but didn’t kill each other. There was a days-long standoff; eventually they made a fire together and cooked a rabbit. Hux had a beard in this dream. He complained about Ren’s singing but let Ren kiss him after they’d been alone together for a long time and the weather had worsened. The enemy army came crashing out from Hux’s side of the woods. Hux stood in front of Ren and got shot. Ren woke when he got shot, too. He wasn’t sweating: now he was cold. Hux was huddled against his chest, still safe in his arms in the real world, fast asleep. Ren stroked his fingers through Hux’s hair. He was almost afraid to close his eyes and dream again, but also curious. It felt like something was happening, like he was being told a story in pieces.

Kinder dreams came to him as dawn approached. They were on a boat together, and conditions were grim but neither of them died. They made it to dry land and found a room in a town full of palm trees and had the kind of raucous sex they’d been wanting for months whilst getting each other off quietly on that ship. Ren woke from this dream less shaken and more wistful. He pressed his face into Hux’s hair and grinned, because there he was. Still there. 

Ren dreamed they had a kid together. He dreamed they were teenagers on a beach and Hux was crying about something, and that Hux slapped Ren’s hand away twice but then let Ren comfort him. He dreamed that they were in space. In this dream Ren thought everyone hated him, everyone in the entire galaxy and especially Hux, but then he was bleeding in a snowdrift and Hux was huddled over him in a protective way, clutching him. 

“Stupid,” Hux said, dragging Ren to safety. His voice was broken and Ren realized, because he was also a psychic in this dream, that Hux actually loved him, so much. One person loved him, and that person was Hux. 

He woke from every one of these dreams desperate for Hux and devastated by the certainty that Hux was lost, relief flooding through him like daylight when he found that Hux was actually somehow miraculously _with him_ , stirring in his arms and sighing against his lips. Hux blinked awake a few times, when Ren pestered his cheeks with kisses. If he was having similar dreams, he didn’t seem concerned by them. He peeked at Ren sleepily, curled up against his chest and fell asleep again. He was so tired. Ren wanted to watch him sleep for hours, but he kept drifting off, too, back into the dreams.

The ones closest to morning were frothy: they worked in an office together, met on an airplane, grew up in the same neighborhood and tromped through the woods as boys, criticizing each other’s fantasy stories. Hux’s were too dark. Ren’s were too grand in scope: unrealistic, Hux said. Even for fantasies where magic was real.

Ren’s hangover hit around eight o’clock in the morning, and he couldn’t sleep anymore for the headache that was steadily gathering strength, no longer just a threat on the horizon but now an insistent tightening pain that throbbed from his jaw to his temples. He wanted some water but didn’t want to leave the bed or take his eyes off of Hux. There was still a remnant of the magic hour hanging about the room, and there was mischief in it as well as wonder. Staying close to Hux and holding on to him seemed crucial, even as Ren’s head began to pound. His mouth was so dry. His eyelids hurt.

Hux moaned and winced when he woke. He was grimacing when he looked up at Ren, clearly hungover, too. They hadn’t eaten enough during this reverie, particularly considering how much energy they’d spent on sex. Also there was the emotional hangover. Ren felt exposed by the daylight through the window. He’d shown Hux his fucking vacation pictures. He’d played mandolin for Hux. They’d talked about Anakin. He could see Hux recalling all that had been said, too, and done. Hux rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling of Ren’s bedroom, pulling the blankets up to his chin. 

“I’m gonna get water and some Advil,” Ren said. “You want some?”

“Yes,” Hux said. He closed his eyes.

Rey and Finn were still asleep, their bedroom door closed. Ren usually longed to tell Rey everything when something like this happened, but nothing exactly like this had ever happened, and he was glad she wasn’t awake, that he wouldn’t have to try to explain. He walked to the bathroom in his underwear and fetched the medicine, refilled the water glass. 

He went back to his bedroom feeling nervous, like he should ask permission to enter. Hux was still under the blankets, eyes closed, but Ren could feel that he was awake. He knelt onto the bed and offered the water, the pills. Hux swallowed three Advil and gulped almost exactly half the water, which made Ren’s heart ache. That he didn’t want to take any more than his fair share. 

Ren knew that the first thing said, the first significant exchange, would be important. He wished his headache wasn’t pounding every half-formed thought back down like a hammer flattening nails. He swallowed two pills, finished the water. It seemed important to finish his half of the water, what Hux had saved for him.

“Could you give me a ride home?” Hux asked before Ren could come up with whatever he should have said to keep Hux from saying that. 

“Yeah,” Ren said, because what else could he say? No, I refuse? We talked last night about you staying forever, was that not real? Of course it wasn’t real, just as the dreams were only that. 

They dressed in silence. The brightness of the morning seemed alien, like they had awakened on another planet. The quiet felt like an attempt not to place any blame for how they’d gotten there.

Ren was always tempted to get angry when he was hurt, and he was experiencing the pull toward both as he walked out into the parking lot, Hux trailing after him and squinting against the sunlight. It had rained overnight and everything was glistening unattractively, larva-like. Ren hated spring. He always had. It seemed to have these expectations of you. 

Hux said nothing when he climbed into the truck, nothing when Ren started it up and peeled too fast out of the lot. Ren felt like, best case scenario, Hux was waiting for him to expose himself to rejection. Worst case, Hux was trying to remember what they’d even said after three drinks, weird false promises and grand plans. 

“How’s your ass?” Ren asked, unwisely. He did unwise things when he felt cornered.

“What?” Hux turned from the passenger side window, out of which he’d been miserably peering. 

“Are you okay? I mean, sore, or whatever?” 

“I-- No. Yes, but it’s fine. You didn’t hurt me,” he said, a little sharply. “So don’t worry.” 

“So where am I going?” Ren asked, turning toward the highway. “Which motel?”

Just the word ‘motel’ felt cruel, like an insult he was lobbing. Hux gave him directions. Ren glanced down at Hux’s pale hands. They were tensed over his thighs, like Ren’s driving made him nervous. Hux’s shirt was wrinkled as hell, and he had the energy of a refugee. Like someone who had just survived something harrowing.

Stop, Ren told himself, and then he told himself he wasn’t the one doing this. Hux had closed off. It was like a door had shut between them during the night. The cars and the highway and the billboards seemed to mock them: this is what’s real, they said. Not you two.

“There it is,” Hux said when a sign that said RED CARPET INN was visible up ahead. “That one.” 

Ren had expected it to be bad. He’d ached for the thought of Hux alone in a dingy room, the smells of prior occupants not quite wiped out. But this was really something else. At first glance it was unexceptional, just a cheap motel like any other, but then the raw, bleeding energy of the place hit him as he pulled into the lot and peered at the closed doors and curtained windows, looking for any signs of life. No one was in the parking lot or standing on the exposed walkway on the second floor, but he could feel people seething behind the motel’s closed doors, huddled together or alone in the dark. He could feel that, in one way or another, some of them would never come out.  

They sat there in his truck after he shut off the engine. Hux just stared at the motel, pointedly turned away from Ren. He’d unbuckled his seatbelt but hadn’t moved since. The rain that had fallen overnight made the motel and its parking lot look like wet garbage, like a pile of something that shouldn’t have been exposed to the elements. Overlaying the wet asphalt fumes was a grease trap smell from the diner in the neighboring lot, which was busy. Its liveliness emphasized the deadness of the motel. Ren couldn’t imagine midnight in this place, or three in the morning. The kind of thoughts that would seep from the walls and into someone’s head. 

Hux didn’t reach for the passenger side door handle, didn’t climb out. They both watched a mockingbird fly from the roof of the motel and into a puddle in the parking lot, where it captured a squirming bug in its beak before taking off again.

“April is the cruellest month,” Ren said, though it was nearing mid-May. The sentiment still applied to this sticky, sunny, uncomfortable morning. 

“What?” Hux turned and looked at Ren like he had when Ren asked about the state of his ass. Ren felt stabbed by Hux’s searching, unsteadied expression this time, and like he deserved to be.

“It’s from a poem,” Ren said. “Never mind. Sorry.” 

“Oh. Right.” Hux turned to look at the motel again. “That’s Prufrock, or whatever.” 

It wasn't Prufrock, but Ren wasn't going to correct Hux now, when they were waiting to see if this moment and this place would consume everything that had come before. At least Hux had gotten the right poet. That was maybe a good sign, like they were still connected. Unless he thought Prufrock was the poet.

“Listen,” Ren said, and his heart dropped. He sounded like Han. 

“Do you want to come in?” Hux asked before Ren could figure out what he might say next that would sound less like Han when he was leaving. 

Hux turned to Ren, who was fumbling with his seatbelt in his excitement to get into that horrible place, nodding. 

Hux’s room was on the first floor, not far from where Ren had parked the truck. Ren hovered close behind Hux while he used a plastic key card to unlock the door. It was dark inside, heavy curtains pulled over the only window, but Ren shut the door behind them at once anyway, as if they were running from something and couldn’t be seen. Hux moved ahead to turn on a lamp that sat on the table beside the room’s sad, sagging bed. 

The lamplight was dim, but it threw off enough light to reveal Hux’s attempts to make the place liveable. There was a woven runner on the end of the bed that looked very fine, something that had come from his past life. The lamp itself was a designer piece of some sort, polished white and angular with a pale blue shade, and a diffuser beside it did its best to mask the stale smell that lived in the walls and the carpet, which was indeed red. On the laminated table near the window there was a stack of library books and a mostly-empty plastic handle of vodka, a single coffee mug. 

“So,” Hux said, standing by the bed while Ren lingered near the door, mourning for him. “This is where I’ve been.” 

Ren heard this as if from across lifetimes. He rushed to Hux like he might disappear if Ren didn’t reach him in time. Hux’s relief hit him even before they touched, pouring from Hux like an answering glow. Ren pulled Hux into his arms, squeezed him tight and lifted him up until his heels left the ground. Hux clung, his face pressed to Ren's neck. He was doing a kind of quaking thing, not a sob or even a shudder but a bone-deep shedding of some fear, maybe.

They held on to each other like that for a long time in the middle of that room. It wasn’t out of hesitation to do whatever came next. They were savoring it, as if they had waited centuries to have this back. The ride in the truck had felt that long. 

Finally Ren knew what to say when it was important to say the right thing. He kissed the side of Hux’s head, his ear, and pulled back to hold his face gently with both hands. Hux peered up at him, waiting. The quake in his bones had settled into a slight shiver along his jaw. 

“Let me help you pack,” Ren said. 

He didn’t say, because he was afraid to push it too far: It’s the least I can do. For taking so long to find you. 

“Okay,” Hux said. He nodded and put his hands over Ren’s, stroked the back of Ren’s hands with his thumbs. “Yes, thanks. It won’t take long.”

Hux had kept his travel bags from his past life, when Snoke might have sent him to Hong Kong or Singapore at any moment. They were attractive and sturdy, a big roller and a duffel, a shoulder bag and a laptop case. Ren went into the bathroom to pack Hux’s toiletries into the laptop case, which now housed no laptop, while Hux stuffed his clothes into the roller like he had a time limit, wrinkling everything.

The motel bathroom was even more depressing than Ren had expected: barely big enough for the tub and the toilet, walls yellowed, reeking of some disinfectant that had surely been applied by Hux and which didn’t entirely conceal a kind of institutional reek of melancholy. Hux’s shampoo bottle was nearly empty, something that looked like it was once quite expensive. His shave kit was very posh, the brush immaculately clean, but he’d resorted to a cheap bottle of shaving cream that came in an aerosol can. It was the same kind Ren used, but something about the idea of Hux using it with the rest of his fine shaving things was pitiable. Surely he’d had some very fussy stuff before, the kind you had to mix into a bowl with water. Hux’s towels were nice, but had clearly suffered from being washed in machines without gentle cycles recently. Ren held one to his face, thinking of Hux himself having been handled that way, without the care he deserved, and hurried to return to him when the bathroom was cleaned out.

Hux had unplugged his fancy lamp and was holding it uncertainly. Ren sensed that he needed to be rescued from a renewed sense of paralyzing doubt and went to him. He eased the lamp from Hux’s hands. The curtains were open now, but the bright morning didn’t seem able to reach the room even so, in part because the window was so dirty. It was like they were in a fish tank that needed cleaning. Anyone who passed by would see them through a film.

“This can ride in the cab with us,” Ren said, hugging the lamp against his chest. He thought it was ugly, but he could tell Hux had paid good money for it. 

“Right,” Hux said, and he blinked himself out of his oncoming trance. “Almost done, just. Let me do one last check.” 

Ren opened the door, throwing real light into the room. He stood there propping the door open with his body, Hux’s laptop case and the duffel full of miscellaneous things slung over his shoulder, the lamp resting awkwardly in his arms. He watched Hux poke his head into the bathroom, the closet. Hux got down on his hands and knees to check under the bed. Finding nothing there, he rose and looked at Ren, groping for the handle of the roller suitcase that was stuffed with his clothes, then the shoulder bag where he’d stashed the library books, the coffee mug, and what was left of his shitty vodka. 

“I’m paid up for the week,” Hux said. “In cash, I always paid in cash. So I can just leave.”

“You can just leave,” Ren said, nodding. 

Hux nodded, too, but he didn’t move. He didn’t believe it, even with all his things packed and Ren waiting in the doorway, holding his lamp.

“Come on,” Ren said, begging as gently as he could manage. “I’m hungry. You?”

“Yes, starving.” Hux took a step toward Ren, then another, rolling the suitcase behind him. “I’m hungover,” he said when he met Ren in the doorway. “Just-- My head. I’m sorry, I couldn’t think.” 

Ren kissed him on the lips, just quickly. “We could go to that diner,” he said, his chest starting to warm with an immense relief that he wanted to warn himself against, though there seemed to be no going back now. 

“Not that diner.” Hux walked out past Ren, leaving the room behind him. Ren followed and let the door slam shut. Hux was looking across the parking lot, at the diner’s painted windows. “It smells like death, at least from out here. I had a dream that these demons with painted faces ate there at night.” 

“Whoa.” Now Ren wanted to try it even more. But he would let Hux pick a place. “Anywhere,” he said when Hux looked over at him. “Your treat.” 

“Yes.” Hux grinned. “Mine, this time.” 

They went to a crappy bagel chain place that Hux apparently liked. Ren got them a table near the windows so he could watch the spot where he’d parked his truck, all of Hux’s stuff piled into the cab with the lamp while they ate. Hux paid for two egg bagels with cream cheese at the counter, and two coffees. Ren didn’t normally drink coffee, but he accepted his from Hux as if it was a token of true love, cupping its warmth in two hands. Hux made a face at the amount of sugar Ren added but didn’t say anything. 

On the way back to Ren’s place, everything but the lamp and the laptop case slid around in the truck bed as Ren drove as slowly as he could manage without getting honked at overmuch. Hux held the lamp between his legs, his free hand resting on Ren’s thigh. Again, they didn’t speak, and Ren wondered if this was a quirk of Hux’s when he rode in someone’s passenger seat. Either way, the quiet between them felt completely different now. It was reassuring, peaceful, and they’d both put their windows down since they were driving backroads now, avoiding the highway. The day was heating up, and the gleam of overnight rain was drying off. Trees that lined the streets were budding, glowing with tiny green leaves.

“We can spend the rest of the day looking at houses online,” Ren said when they were carrying all of Hux’s stuff up to the apartment. “If you want.” 

Hux’s quietness had changed since they parked. He was scared; Ren could feel it. He was afraid they couldn’t really do this-- That Ren could, maybe, but not him. 

Hux looked at Ren, incredulous. “Houses?” 

“Yeah, I want a house. A yard. Small, but with privacy. I have some artistic goals that relate to landscaping.” 

That made Hux smile, at least, as they came to the apartment’s front door. Ren hesitated when he heard voices inside: Rey, Finn. They were up now, making their breakfast. He reached for the knob and found it unlocked. Whatever, it would be fine. They had to meet Hux sometime. Escrow wouldn’t happen overnight. 

The front door opened directly into the kitchen, so they were all there when Ren walked in, Hux following uncertainly behind him: Rey at the stove, Finn at the fridge, Han at the kitchen table. 

“There you are,” Han said. He was drinking coffee; Ren could smell it. Han loved coffee. “Where’ve you been? I told you I needed the truck.” His eyes shifted to Hux, but he didn’t ask.

“Hey, you’re back,” Finn said. He was looking at Hux, clearly making an effort to be as friendly as possible, though the confused question in this statement was obvious enough. “Um,” he said, glancing from Hux to Ren. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. We’re just.” Ren had no idea how to describe it. Behind them, the apartment’s front door was still hanging open. He considered that they might just bolt. 

“Have you had breakfast?” Rey asked, trying to save Ren’s ass as usual. She held up the spatula she’d been using to flip eggs, as if to remind him what breakfast was. 

“We ate.” Ren knew he had to say something, that this was one of those moments that could burst the fragile floodgates or keep them patched for now. “This is Hux,” he said, stepping aside so that Hux wasn’t half-hidden behind him. “He’s crashing with me. But I’m going to get my own place,” he said before Finn could protest or Han could mention that it was very generous of Ren to offer up his cousin’s place to his friends. “Like, this week. Or as soon as I can. I’ll be moving out.” 

“Oh.” Rey searched Ren’s face, asking him _what the fuck_ with her eyes. “Okay. Did you find something, or--?” 

“No, but I’m going to.”

“About time,” Han said. “I mean, good, good plan. Toss me the keys, yeah?”

Ren considered how crappy the logistics of house hunting would be without a vehicle. So they would go car shopping first. The idea of spending the rest of Anakin’s money didn’t seem horrible at all if he’d be spending it on Hux’s behalf. It seemed right, in a way he never could have predicted. He took the truck’s keys from his pocket and tossed them to Han, who caught them in mid-air. 

“Is it gassed up?” Han asked. 

“I have no idea.” Ren had too much on his mind during that last drive to note the gas meter. He walked toward his room and Hux followed. Ren could sense Hux’s distress on the air like a blaring siren. Hux was still wearing his rumpled shirt, still looking like he’d barely escaped from a sinking ship. His humiliated discomfort was excruciating; poor baby. Ren never would have lead him into this trap if he’d known it was lying in wait. 

“Hey, wait a minute,” Han said, predictably, before they could clear the doorway that lead toward the hall, toward Ren’s room. “Where are you going? What’s all that stuff? Come sit down, I haven’t seen you since Christmas.” 

“I’ll be back in a second, just let me put this stuff down.” Ren knew he hadn’t exactly earned his put-upon, pissed off tone, from Han’s perspective. But Han had no idea what was going on, as usual. 

Ren’s room seemed now like a paltry sanctuary. The light was still too bright through the window, and even with the door shut they could still hear everyone talking in the kitchen. Hux was bright in the face with embarrassment, still holding the handle of his suitcase as if he was going to have to make a run for it at any moment. 

“Sorry,” Ren said. He went over and eased the bag from Hux’s shoulder, then took the suitcase from him and propped it against the wall. Finally he took the lamp, waiting for Hux’s white-knuckled grip to uncurl and then bringing it to his bedside table, where he shuffled his own cheap IKEA lamp aside to make room for it. “There,” he said, plugging it in to an already overloaded surge protector. “Fits right in.” 

“That was your father,” Hux said when Ren turned to him. 

“Yeah. I guess I should go shoot the shit with him for a minute. You can stay in here, if you want. He’s not that bad, he’s just cocky and, uh. Kind of rude.” 

“You seemed that way at first,” Hux said. He went to the bed and sat, took a deep breath. 

“Yeah?” Ren stood in front of Hux and smoothed his hair down with one hand. Hux exhaled under Ren’s touch, slowly. 

“Yes, you. Elbowed your way in and chased that other man away.” 

“Oh, sorry. Maybe he was your true love.” 

Hux looked up at Ren and smiled. It happened just as his exhale had: slowly, with measured relief that eased into the corners of his eyes and left them looking brighter. 

“What am I doing here?” Hux asked, almost whispering and seeming to ask this more of himself than of Ren. 

“Finn and Rey will be gone in an hour,” Ren said, as if that was the only issue Hux saw with his sudden presence in Ren’s life. “Han, too. Then we’ll have the place to ourselves. And soon I’ll have my own place, and. You’ll be there. If you want.” 

“I do,” Hux said, taking Ren’s hand. He brought it to his cheek. Ren had to swallow down something heavy that had leapt into his throat. Hux had said _I do_ as if it was a marriage vow, with that kind of gravity. But surely that was Ren’s insanity working itself upon reality, and nothing Hux intended to convey. Anyway, Ren couldn’t propose marriage. That was too wild for even him. Not yet, at least. Maybe soon, though.

Hux wanted to stay in Ren’s room, of course. Ren went back out to the kitchen alone. Everyone was seated with plates of food, and there was the feeling, when he entered, that some conversation about him had just ceased. 

His least favorite feeling in the world. He went to the fridge and avoided everyone’s eyes. 

“Help yourself to some eggs,” Rey said.

“I already had eggs this morning.” Technically it had been an egg bagel. He scanned the contents of the fridge, wishing he’d had something in mind when he crossed the room to open it. Now it seemed obvious that he was just stalling. 

“How’ve you been?” Han asked. 

That last word made Ren snarl into the fridge. It was his old name, almost, and he’d been bracing himself for Han to slip up and say it. 

“Fine.” Ren grabbed the milk and closed the fridge door hard enough to rattle every glass bottle. “Good, actually.” 

“Yeah? Where are you looking, for your own place?”

He hadn’t gotten that far. Maybe Hux had a preference. At the moment Ren felt like maybe they should move to Singapore, or Australia. Some place that required a very long flight for anyone who wanted to visit. At the counter, his back still turned on the table while he poured himself a glass of milk, he shrugged. 

“Not far from here,” he said. “Maybe closer to the city.” 

“That’ll be more expensive.” 

“No shit. I can afford it.” 

“You sure can.” 

Ren wished Rey or Finn would say something. They were shoveling food into their mouths like they wanted to escape. He couldn’t blame them.

“What do you need the truck for?” Ren asked when he turned toward the table, half the milk gulped down already. 

“My buddy invented something,” Han said. “He needs me to drive it to Newark.” 

“What’d he invent?” Finn asked, attempting to infuse some cheerfulness into the question. Finn was such a good sport with their family. It shouldn’t have pissed Ren off, but sometimes it did.

“Ehh,” Han said. “It’s sorta hard to explain. And I don’t know if I should say. He’s real secretive about it.” 

“Sounds like a winner,” Ren said. 

Han cut him a look. Rey did, too. Hers was of the pleading sort. Ren tried to soften his own expression, for her sake. 

“Where’s your friend?” Han asked, gesturing toward Ren’s closed bedroom door with the handle of his fork. 

Ren knew his eyes had hardened again, but he couldn’t fight it now. “Where do you think? In my room.” 

“He’s shy, huh? He looked sort of--” Han trailed off, eyebrows lifting. “Imperiled.” 

“He looks familiar, actually,” Finn said, before Ren could explode over that remark. “I was trying to figure out where I know him from.”

“Maybe he’s been to the restaurant,” Rey said, also hurriedly, as if she knew the truth. Finn had probably seen Hux on the news last year. 

“Maybe,” Finn said. He shrugged and scraped up the last of his eggs. “Anyway, you should tell him we don’t bite.” 

“Some of you bite,” Ren said.

“Leia’s not here,” Han said. He winced at his own comment. “Sorry. I might see her while I’m up north, actually. She’ll be in New York this weekend, for work.”

Ren hated it when Han knew more about Leia’s whereabouts than he did. Leia didn’t do Facebook, or any other social media. So this meant they’d been in touch again recently.

“Tell her we said hello,” Rey said. She kept giving Ren concerned glances. They made him feel bad, as usual, for being concerning. 

“Yeah,” Ren said. Trying to be a good sport. “And tell her I’m getting my own place. That’ll make her happy.” 

Han turned his doubtful look down toward his plate. It was true that Ren’s brief stabs at living on his own hadn’t gone well in the past. Leia would just have to meet Hux. Han was wrong; she’d be the least likely to snap at him. She’d get it, although the part about securities fraud might be a problem at first.

“Well, I should get on the road,” Han said. He stood and wiped his mouth with his napkin. Something about the gesture was so familiar, from childhood, that Ren felt grudgingly fond of him. “My buddy’s up near Atlantic City, so I’ll be driving all day.” 

“Good luck,” Ren said when Han walked over to clap him on the shoulder. Ren did the same to Han. It was their compromised version of a hug. “With the invention. And with Mom.” 

“Hey,” Han said. He pointed a finger at Ren’s face, joking. “Don’t remind me that I need it. Call her, okay? Tell her about your big move yourself.” 

“I will.” 

“And--” Han flicked his head in the direction of Ren’s room. “Tell her about that, too, if that’s-- Something.” 

“It is.” 

“Good. She’ll be glad. I’m glad.” 

Han squeezed Ren’s shoulder and turned to say goodbye to Rey and Finn, who had risen from the table to drop their plates in the sink. Just as quickly as it had assembled, their little family reunion broke up. Han was off with the truck, and Rey and Finn were right behind him, on their way to meet some friends in their ultimate frisbee league for practice. When the apartment had gone quiet, Ren locked up and hurried back to Hux, looking forward to witnessing his incredulity when Ren told him that his cousin and her husband played semi-professional ultimate frisbee. They had sponsors, even. 

As soon as Ren walked into the room he could see that Hux was in no mood to hear about ultimate frisbee or any other whimsical family fun facts. He was curled up on the bed, still fully dressed in his rumpled three days-old clothes, his face hidden in one of Ren’s pillows. He lifted his face only partially when Ren approached, just one eye visible. 

“You okay?” Ren asked, though he personally hated being asked that question when he obviously wasn’t. It just came out.

“Yes,” Hux said, unconvincingly, his voice muffled by the pillow. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be fine.” 

Hux rolled his eyes. Ren sat beside him and rubbed his shoulder, trying to work some of the tension from it. Hux was pulled so tight, it was like he’d sucked all the air from the room. 

“I have some trouble with anxiety,” Hux muttered. “Sometimes. Usually when there are-- People. I’m not so good around them anymore.” 

“They’re gone now.” 

“Yes, I heard. I’m trying to make my consuming dread of imminent death go away, therefore.” 

“Hux.” Ren leaned down over him, feeling protective but wary of crowding him. He knew so much about how to handle someone having a breakdown, from his own handling, but he’d never been in the position of helping someone else deal with one. It wasn’t coming to him as intuitively as he might have expected. “Do you take anything for it?”

Hux snorted, and Ren regretted the dumb question. 

“I don’t have insurance.”

“Right, sorry--”

“And after our bagel feast this morning I’ve got about a hundred and thirty-five dollars left in my bank account. That doesn’t go very far toward anxiety treatment. Not that I’d be capable of even facing that right now, finances aside.” 

“Yeah.” 

Therapy took a lot of energy from Ren, especially when he was a kid and he was first introduced to the concept. He suspected that Hux hadn’t utilized whatever top flight insurance First Order Incorporated provided for anxiety treatments back in the day either. 

“Sorry,” Hux said, moaning when Ren curved around him from behind. Hux pressed back against Ren as if he wanted more contact, not less. Ren held him tighter. The therapeutic benefits of spooning were limited, but Ren believed there was some value there. “You’re just-- I should warn you to, ah. Prepare yourself. Your investment in me is not one that I would advise you to make, if I were giving you financial counsel. Even as your talent agent, I don’t recommend it.” 

“What about as my-- Lover?” Ren asked, pronouncing that word with an appropriate amount of overdramatic flair. 

Victory: Hux laughed, hiding his face in the pillow again, his shoulders bouncing within the circle of in Ren’s arms. 

“Oh god,” Hux said. “Am I one of those now?”

“Yes.” Ren gave Hux’s ass a little hump in demonstration.

“Mhm. Well. I fear I might be most difficult in that regard.” 

“We’ll see.” 

“Yes, we will.” Hux rolled over. He was smiling again, mostly in his eyes, his lips twitching as if to try to contain it. “Are they all really gone?”

“All gone.” 

“I don’t mean to be rude. I just am.”

“Me too. It’s okay.” 

Hux sat up and stretched his arms over his head, back arching. He tilted his neck one way, then the other. Ren stayed slumped on the bed, watching with adoration as Hux began to unbutton his shirt. 

“I’m going to use your bathtub,” Hux said. “And shave and all that. My face,” he clarified when Ren lifted his eyebrows. “I might be in there a while.” 

“I’m not invited?” 

“No.” Hux patted Ren’s cheek. “I need to be alone for a moment. You have to let me do that or I’ll run away screaming.” 

“Okay. I was joking, anyway.” 

He hadn’t been. But Hux was right, of course. They would need to carve out a little space for themselves here, where they could. When they had their house, they would each have their own room for work. A studio for Ren, office for Hux. Two bathrooms, also. Both with windows. 

Hux went to the closet when he’d stripped down to nothing. He’d already hung his clothes up in there, bunched alongside Ren’s. Most of Ren’s clothes were on the floor rather than hanging up, or stuffed into his bureau drawers, so there was plenty of space. Hux selected a short black robe that looked like it was made of silk.

“Don’t laugh,” he said, slipping it on. “This is part of my bathing ritual. I know it’s absurd.” 

“It’s great,” Ren said. “You look hot.” 

“It’s the most flamboyant thing I’ve ever owned,” Hux said, smoothing his hands down over the robe after he’d tied the sash. The hem just barely covered his thighs and made his pale legs look so long, also edible. “And yes, I love it.” 

Ren smirked at the idea that the robe was flamboyant at all. On Hux, maybe it was, a little. He watched Hux collect his toiletries and go to the door, where he hesitated for a moment. 

“You’ll be safe out there,” Ren said. “I chased all the good guys away.” 

He worried for a second that Hux wouldn’t get the joke, which harkened back to their roleplay about him being a criminal on the run. That seemed like it had happened weeks ago already. But when Hux turned and grinned at him, Ren knew: he got it. He liked it, even.

While Hux bathed, Ren opened his laptop and started his house hunting research. It was an intimidating project right away, and he was glad he’d have Hux to help him with the practical details. He got distracted and had started reading an article titled ‘Myths You Learned in Health Class’ that was linked on one of his lifting subreddits when his phone dinged with a new text message. It was from Rey. 

_Finn remembered where he’d seen your friend Hux. You know he’s this guy, right??_

Under that was a link to an old news article. Ren could see from the URL that it was about Hux and his trial. He looked at his open bedroom doorway. The running water had shut off in the bathroom across the hall. Hux would be in the tub, facing the window, trying to relax. Ren felt like he shouldn’t click on the link, like it wasn’t fair. But Hux had read from these articles himself, wanting Ren to know about his crimes, his trial. Maybe this was one of the same articles he’d picked. 

He opened it. The title was PROBATION SENTENCE FOR FIRST ORDER CONSPIRATOR AFTER TESTIMONY. 

Ren didn’t recall any titles from Hux’s article readings, but he knew somehow, right away, that this wasn’t one that Hux had chosen. 

_After questioning from defense counsel that seemed designed to elicit sympathy for Hux, chiefly involving his physically abusive father and Hux’s alleged view of Snoke as an authoritative “father figure” who was not to be questioned or defied, the District Attorney raised questions about Hux’s late mother, Fiona Brady. Brady was shot and killed during a robbery at her place of business in Whiteabbey, Ireland when Hux was four years old. District Attorney Pearson, following an objection from defense counsel, was instructed by Judge Voy to rephrase his initial question after asking if Hux found it ironic that his mother had been murdered by a thief and that he had in turn spent much of his career aiding and abetting an infamous thief._

_“Was the nature of your mother’s death formative for you at all?” Pearson asked in his rephrasing._

_Defense counsel objected again, and Pearson asked that the question be allowed on the basis that the defense had focused at length on Hux’s childhood as it pertained to his motivations. Judge Voy overruled the objection and instructed the witness to answer. Hux’s answer is excerpted below._

> _MR. HUX: Yes. It was formative._
> 
> _  
> MR. PEARSON: Can you describe how so?_
> 
> _  
> MR. HUX: Because her killer was never caught. He stole three hundred and twenty-four pounds from the pub she was closing up. He shot her even after she gave it to him. She bled to death and he got away. So justice was not real to me. It was something from a story, like a fairy tale. Fairness did not exist in my world. If you were bad, if you took what you wanted, if you hurt people, you would get away with it. My father taught me the same lesson. People knew he was hurting me, and they did nothing. So, yes. Her murder was formative. In that sense and otherwise._

__  


_Pearson had no further questions for the Defendant, and an hour later the jury found Hux guilty of only one count of intentional misrepresentation, acquitting him of five other criminal charges. Judge Voy sentenced Hux to pay a $700,000 fine in restitution to his victims and to serve ten years probation in addition to a lifetime ban from working in securities or finance in any capacity in the state of Maryland. As many legal experts predicted, the prosecution is now expected to focus on seeking the maximum penalty for Snoke._

Ren closed the tab. He felt cold, then overheated. His stomach had twisted up even at the beginning of the article. From across the hall, he could hear the faint sound of water sloshing behind the closed bathroom door when Hux adjusted in the tub. Then it was quiet again. 

He picked up his phone and texted Rey. 

_I know everything. Please be nice to him. He’s special and I love him._

He waited for a response that would say something like, but you just met. 

_OK_ , Rey sent back instead. _Just wanted to make sure you knew. Snoke’s a nasty old crook. Glad he’s rotting in jail. Me and Finn are going to make jambalaya at the apartment later, you two should join us._

 _Maybe_ , Ren sent, and then he deleted the whole exchange.

Hux’s bathing ritual lasted for a long time. Ren heard him draining the bath and tapping his razor against the sink. He heard the hiss from the can of shaving foam. When he finally heard the bathroom door open, he pushed his laptop away as if it was evidence of some betrayal, though he’d read the article about Hux on his phone. He was sitting up, watching the bedroom doorway and probably looking suspicious when Hux entered. 

“That was wonderful,” Hux said. If he noticed anything strange about Ren’s demeanor, he didn’t let on. He seemed lighter on his feet, and he smelled amazing even from across the room as he put his toiletries away, stacking them neatly on top of the rolling suitcase that he’d stashed in Ren’s closet. He came to the bed in his robe and Ren gathered him close. Hux laughed under his breath at Ren’s enthusiastic kissing and nuzzling of his freshly shaven cheeks.

“You’re so soft,” Ren said. He wanted to take it back when he remembered Hux saying his father had accused him of that. 

“Mmm, sometimes.” Hux was smiling; he seemed unperturbed by the term. “Have you been looking at house listings?”

“Yes.” Ren would never mention the article. Hux would talk about his mother someday. They had time. “Nothing great so far. Help me look. You’ll be better at this than me.” 

“I’m tempted to see if my old place is on the market,” Hux said. “Though I suspect it’s out of our price range. Which is what?”

Ren wanted to tackle Hux and beam like an idiot: he’d said _our_. Hux was looking at Ren mildly and awaiting an answer as if he hadn’t even noticed the slip. Maybe it wasn’t a slip. Maybe this was really happening.

“I’ll just be frank with you,” Ren said. “I mean. About money.” 

“Yes, you should be. Seeing as I’m your agent.” Hux said it in a less joking way now. 

“I’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars left. That has to cover a car, too, now that my dad’s taken the truck.” 

“Hmm.” Hux looked like he thought that wasn’t great news, but also like he was intrigued by the challenge. “Okay. There’s a sizeable down payment there, at least. Perhaps it’s smarter to look at cars first, since we’ll need transportation to investigate any property listings we’re interested in.” 

He’d said _we_ , twice. Ren couldn’t help it now. He was beaming. 

“What about that is funny?” Hux asked, eyes narrowing.

“Nothing. I’m not laughing.” 

“What’s that look on your face?”

“Sheer joy.” 

“Oh.” Hux waved his hand as if to dismiss that and returned his attention to the laptop. “Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. We have a lot of work to do here if you want to get your money’s worth.” 

“Advise me,” Ren said. He managed his expression into something less manic and rested his chin on Hux’s shoulder. “Please.” 

Hux huffed. He opened an Excel spreadsheet. The program had come with Ren’s laptop. He had never opened it before. 

“Obviously we’ll be buying used,” Hux said, bringing up Autotrader in Ren’s browser. “For our budget, I’d suggest ten thousand.” 

Ren closed his eyes and smiled. He could agree to anything Hux said as long as he kept talking about the money like it belonged to him, too. If Hux caught himself doing this he would probably backtrack, but in the meantime it felt like what Ren had always needed: to divide the remainder of Anakin’s fortune with someone who could transform it into a future he wanted just by sharing it with him.

“How do you feel about Volkswagen?” Hux asked, elbowing Ren. “Are you asleep already?”

“No. Just reveling.” 

“You do a lot of that.”

“Not normally.” 

“Well, you won’t be reveling when you realize that this money’s not going to stretch very far before we have to earn more of it.” 

Ren leaned up to nip at Hux’s ear, then whispered into it, like it was a secret: “I will still be reveling even if we end up in a cardboard box. As long as you’re there with me.” 

“Ha, will you. You don’t know what it’s like to scramble for money, clearly.” 

“Teach me.” 

“I’m trying,” Hux said. “Stop being happy and listen.”  

There was something fond and already familiar in this scolding. Hux was clicking through pages of cars for sale, studying specs and prices. Ren had resumed gnawing gently on Hux’s ear. Hux was trying not to smile: Ren could see it at the corner of his lips. Ren could feel it, too, in the way Hux relaxed against him and sighed, allowing this attention to his ear. 

“I know you said you hate negotiating,” Hux said. “But I bet your presence makes it easier.” 

“My presence?”

“Don’t act like you haven’t cultivated it intentionally. Your size and your tattoos, the way you stare at people like you can read their thoughts.” 

“You noticed that.” Ren was glowing again. He could feel it now, was beginning to recognize it from within. It was entirely Hux’s doing. 

“Yes, and I want you to utilize all of it when we’re on these used car lots, all right? I’ll employ my negotiating skills, meanwhile.” 

“We’ll be a good team.” 

“Quite right.”

Hux leaned onto Ren’s chest more fully and tipped the laptop toward him, showing him some car. Ren couldn’t pay attention. He’d always pointedly not given a shit about cars, to spite his dad. He couldn’t make himself give a shit even now. Hux could pick whatever he wanted. The nipple that was halfway visible as Hux’s robe loosened was more interesting. Ren reached for it and rubbed until it stiffened under the pad of his finger. Hux moaned under his breath and turned his face against Ren’s. 

“We’ll never get anything done,” Hux said, shifting so that his robe opened wider. 

Though their initial search for a car dissolved into desperate frottage within minutes, they did get things done eventually. They bought a little black car and Hux confessed that he didn’t ‘really’ know how to drive. Ren laughed before realizing Hux was serious; he’d relied on the subway in college and apparently had a personal driver named Mitaka when he worked for Snoke. Ren gave him driving lessons, and they had sex in the car within two days of owning it, largely due to how much they both got off on Hux accelerating while Ren said things like, _that’s it, you can go a little faster, good, baby, that’s good_. Hux obtained a driver’s license and spent his days researching marketing techniques for Ren’s show, which had morphed from a haunted house-type theme to more of a ghosts of past lives sort of thing. 

Ren took Hux to gallery openings and introduced him to the old art school friends he still spoke to and some more recent acquaintances on the scene. Hux was visibly terrified on the way to these outings but always did well once they arrived. He had a peerless poker face when staring down someone who might judge him. The free wine helped, as did the ability to hold Ren’s hand while they strolled around muttering commentary to each other. Ren felt like everyone he knew was seeing a new side of him and marveling at it: the boyfriend-having side, the side that could attract someone intelligent and well-groomed like Hux, someone who was uptight and reserved but who would hold his hand in public. Back at the apartment, after these outings, Hux would curl up in Ren’s arms and lie there letting Ren stroke his back while he curated a soundtrack for coming down from social interaction. 

The house hunt took longer than Ren would have liked, but their house had to perfect, and it was worth the wait when they found the right one and made the down payment. Neither of them could name exactly what was so special about it, but it felt right, and the price was good. It was farther from the city than Ren had planned, but the yard was exactly what he’d pictured: tall fence, trees, and a free-standing garage for his more adventurous or sizable projects.

There were three bedrooms with what they both agreed was a good amount of light, warm but not glaring, tempered by the tree cover. Their house had only one bathroom, with one window. The best tree on the property was visible through this window, and it was particularly majestic-looking from the vantage point of the tub. They couldn’t fit in there together, but Ren had a habit of joining Hux for his baths anyway, sitting on the floor and reading to him while he soaked. Hux frequently needed a consultation on his selection of bathing oils. Ren was good at that sort of thing.

It did take them a long time to get anything done. They were frequently distracted by each other and were both more than a little afraid move forward, fearing that anything too new or ambitious would tips the scales they’d been lucky enough to rest upon so far. But eventually they got around to furnishing the house, and Ren began making attempts to do something with the yard. He had grand plans for a sanctuary, something special for Hux, and if they ended up getting married inside his design, even better. He put up a hammock between two sturdy trees in the meantime, and on warm summer nights they lay in it together and listened to bugs singing overhead. 

“What made you go to Hammerheads that night?” Ren asked when they were doing this toward the end of that first summer, Hux half asleep and a little sweaty in his arms. 

“I was sure I would find the love of my life there,” Hux said, eyes closed. 

“Ha, okay. I’m serious.” 

Hux sighed and shifted so that his knees were resting against Ren’s thighs. He blinked his eyes open and stroked Ren’s face. Sometimes it was best to ask him these kinds of questions when he was almost asleep, but he’d already been a smart ass about it. 

“I just wanted company,” Hux said. “But then I got there and I was paralyzed. Afraid people would recognize me. I didn’t even look at anyone until you came over and poked me.” 

“Did I really poke you?”

“Yes, in fact I think you even _flicked_ me.” 

“Shit, baby. I’m sorry.” 

“I might have liked it,” Hux said, muttering. “Where would I be now if I’d never been flicked by my true love?”

Hux grinned and opened for Ren’s kiss. He’d made no objection to the use of ‘baby,’ Ren noticed, and he considered this as profound a victory as being called Hux's true love. 

 

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is the house that inspired Ren and Hux's home!](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Richmond-VA/12509766_zpid/6752_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/37.603488,-77.381687,37.446107,-77.60519_rect/11_zm/)
> 
>  
> 
> And [this is the flugelhorn solo Ren is obsessed with](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1krM2kVFvs8) :')


End file.
